Lost and Found
by crystaldolphin42
Summary: Alexandra Mary Winchester. Born in 1980 to John and Mary Winchester. Died in 1987 in Joliet, Indiana. That was 18 years ago. Now, with John missing and the brothers together again, a note and a hunch sends them to where she has been all this time, very much alive. However, time and neglect change a person, and she may not be the sister they once knew . . .
1. Prologue

**DISCLAIMER:** I do not own Supernatural or any of the characters depicted here except for those not in the show. All rights go to Eric Kripke and the CW. I am merely a simple author who chooses to make some changes to an already-amazing story.

 **Prologue: Beginnings**

" _Everything's going to change now, isn't it?" -_ The Goblet of Fire

 _November 2, 1983 - Lawrence, Kansas_

The night of their greatest tragedy was like any other cold November night. No leaves were on the large tree, whose branches whipped back and forth in the chill wind that gusted around the quiet suburban house in Lawrence, Kansas. Darkness encompassed the landscape in the shadow of midnight, left unbroken by the lack of stars in the sky - the only indicator that not all was right in this home.

The house belonged to John and Mary Winchester, a local couple who were completely devoted to each other and their children. John was a mechanic at a garage in town while Mary stayed at home with the kids. They were the typical, happy suburbanite family, perfectly content to stay in their own little corner of the world and let things pass them by.

They had no way of knowing that, in a few hours time, the perfect bubble that they were living in would burst, leaving pain and hardship in its wake.

At the moment, however, Mary Campbell Winchester had nothing more on her mind than getting her children to bed. Lithe and beautiful with blonde curls, the tired mother carried her oldest son Dean into a dark room at the end of the house. She herself was dressed in a white nightgown, more than ready to get to sleep; while she loved her children dearly, they were quite a handful even for her and she needed a little time to rest and recharge. "Come on, let's say goodnight to your brother," she said, flipping on a switch to reveal a nursery. It was rather plain by normal American standards, but the baby in the crib by the window - her youngest, Sam - didn't seem to mind in the slightest. He was looking at his mother and brother, big green eyes gazing at them with interest.

Mary set the squirming four-year-old down by the crib, watching with pride and motherly love as he leaned over the crib rail and kissed his baby brother on the forehead. "'Night, Sam," he said, his high-pitched voice still carrying a bit of a lisp. She smiled at the display of affection and joined her son by the crib side.

"Good night, love," she murmured to her baby, brushing his downy hair back and pressing her lips against his smooth skin.

"Hey, Dean."

Mary straightened and turned at the sound of her husband entering the room. The tall man was also dressed for bed, with sweatpants and an old USMC t-shirt, and carrying a little girl in his arms. "Daddy!" Dean cried with delight and raced over to his father just as he was setting the girl down.

"Hey, buddy," he said with a smile and scooped his oldest son up. Dean was the spitting image of John, all except for his blonde hair, and Mary grinned at the thought of how handsome Dean would be when he grew up - no doubt he'd have girls crawling all over him, just like his old man.

A tugging on the hem of her nightgown made her look down at her three-year-old daughter, Alex. She was an adorable little thing, and John had made it a habit of pointing out how she looked just like Mary, even as a toddler. "Mommy? Can I say g'night to Sammy, too?" she asked, her lips in a pout.

Mary smiled fondly at her and picked her up. "Of course, sweetie," she said, leaning her over the edge of the crib.

The little girl quickly pecked her brother's cheek and ruffled his hair, something she'd picked up from her dad. "Night-night, Sammy," she whispered as if afraid she might wake him, even though he was giving her what might have been a gummy grin; out of the two, Alex had always been Sam's favorite. Mary lifted her up from the crib railing and held her close, the child's thin arms wrapping quickly around her shoulders.

"So what do you think?" John asked his oldest kids. "You two think Sammy's ready to toss around a football yet?"

Dean laughed and shook his head at his father's silliness. "No, Daddy."

"'Course not," Alex said, looking serious like she usually did. "He's too little, Daddy. He'd get hurt."

John chuckled. "I was joking, Alex," he informed her. "We'll just have to teach him when he's older and bigger."

Mary started out of the room carrying the girl in her arms, passing her husband on the way. "I can put her to bed," she told him. "You got him?"

"I got him," John reassured her, hugging Dean protectively. He turned to leave, giving his youngest son one last affectionate gaze. "Sweet dreams, Sam," he said and carried Dean out of the room, turning off the lights as he went.

In the wooden crib by the window, Sam watched his parents and siblings leave, gurgling contentedly and trying to reach his toes. For a few moments, everything in the room was quiet and still, almost radiating peace from within its walls. As the six-month-old turned his gaze upward, though, the baseball-themed mobile began to spin on its own. The clock on the far wall gave a few more ticks before stopping completely, and the moon-shaped night light flickered in the dark.

"There we go, all tucked in," Mary sighed as she sat down on the edge of Alex's bed. "You comfy-cozy there, Lexi?" The little girl didn't answer right away. She stared down at the blankets on her bed, looking troubled, which was unusual for her. "Lex? Baby, what's wrong?" Mary asked, concerned now; her daughter may be too serious for her own good sometimes but she had never been troubled like this before.

"Mommy?" she asked, looking up at her mother, and Mary was startled to see tears in her pretty green eyes. "You know De and I love you a lot, right? Sammy too, even though he's little."

"Of course I do, Lexi," she said. "What's this about?"

The little girl shrugged. "I dunno," she said. "Just a feeling that I won't get to tell you again."

Mary's heart broke to see her only daughter fighting back tears and she moved in closer. "Oh, sweetheart, of course you will," she said. "You'll get to tell me tomorrow night, and the next day, and any day you want."

"No I won't!" she said, starting to panic. "I won't get to tell you tomorrow or ever again!" Without losing another moment, the three-year-old pushed back her sheets and rushed towards her mother, hugging her tightly around the waist and burying her face in Mary's shoulder.

"Lexi, it's okay, it's alright, I'm right here," soothed Mary, attempting to calm her amidst the dread she was starting to feel.

"Don't go into Sammy's room alone tonight!" she warned, her voice choked with tears. "Please, Mommy, get Daddy to go with you or something but don't go in alone!"

"Baby, you're not making any sense." A horrible thought crossed Mary's mind in that instant. "Is there something in Sammy's room?"

"Not yet," she admitted, "but there will be soon. Promise me you won't go alone, Mommy. Please."

Mary kissed her daughter's forehead. "Alright, I promise. I won't go into the room unless your father is with me." She felt her relax a little, but tears still coursed down the little girl's cheeks, her big green eyes wide with terror as she pulled back from her mother. Mary wiped away the salty liquid from her face. "Hey, sweetie, it's alright," she soothed. "Everything's going to be fine, you'll see. Now, how about you try to get some sleep?" Reluctantly, Alex allowed herself to be peeled off of her mother and laid down in her bed. Mary tucked her in again and kissed her forehead once more. "Good night, Alex. I love you."

"Love you too, Mommy," said the tiny girl, and Mary got up from the bed and walked towards her own room. With a troubled sigh, she entered the master bedroom that she and her husband shared and walked towards her side of the bed.

"Just when I was about to send out a search party," joked John, already under the warm covers. "Trouble getting Alex to sleep?

"Yeah," she said briefly, crawling in beside him.

"Huh, that's weird. She usually goes to bed no fuss."

"I know." She paused, wondering if she should bring this up with her husband. "John, I think she was scared."

"Well, every kid gets scared, Mary. It's part of being a kid."

"No, I mean . . . I think she was scared for _me_."

That caught John's attention. He turned over towards his wife and looked at her in concern. "For you?"

She nodded, her lips pressing together as she remembered the terror in her daughter's face as she hugged her close. "She made me promise not to go into Sammy's room alone tonight. She just kept repeating over and over not to go in by myself, saying that something bad was going to happen."

"Did she say what that bad thing would be?"

"No, but she told me that she, Dean, and Sammy all loved me, and that she was afraid she wouldn't get to say it again."

John moved in closer to her and hugged her protectively to him so that her head was against his chest. The steady beating of his heart calmed her as she snuggled in as close as she could get, taking comfort from his presence. "I'm sure she was just remembering some nightmare she had," he said. "There's nothing to worry about."

"But what if there is?" she asked. "I've never seen her so frightened before, John, not even when she and Dean accidentally watched that horror movie. Our children could be in danger."

She felt his lips press against her head, his hand smoothing her blonde curls. "Not a chance," he murmured. "As long as I'm here, I'll protect you and the kids with my life. I promise."

She sighed, feeling all tension leave her body, and wrapped her arms around him. The two stayed like that for a few more moments until Mary yawned. "Try to get some sleep," John whispered. "Everything's going to be fine."

"Okay," answered Mary as she released her husband and, sharing a quick kiss with him, laid down, pulling the covers up to her shoulders.

"Mary?"

"Hm?"

"I love you."

She rolled over just enough to see him and smiled. "I love you, too, John."

Turning over again, she was just dropping off into the darkness of sleep when she heard him murmur "Sweet dreams." Then she allowed it to take her over, letting all of her worries wash away for a while.

On the night table next to the bed, the lights on the baby monitor began to flicker, strange noises coming out of the speaker. It wasn't loud, but it was enough to wake Mary from her semi-peaceful sleep. She switched on the light next to her and turned her head. "John?" she asked, but received no reply. Looking back over her shoulder, she realized that the bed next to her was empty. Her daughter's warning from earlier flashed through her mind, but she pushed it away as she got up to check on Sam. Walking down the hall, she peered cautiously into the nursery, her heart skipping a beat when she saw a dark silhouette standing next to the crib. The next moment, however, she relaxed when she realized that the silhouette must belong to her husband. "John? Is he hungry?" she asked.

"Shhh," said the shadow in reply, turning his head towards her.

"All right," she whispered back, then turned away from the nursery, heading towards the bedroom again.

She took a deep breath and willed herself to calm down. She was just jumpy, that's all. Sam was fine. There was nothing to worry about. Again, Alex's frantic warning played through her mind, and again, she pushed it away. _Everything's fine,_ she told herself. _You've got to relax._

When she got to the end of the hall, however, she saw something strange. The light by the stairs was flickering on and off, guttering like a candle flame. Frowning, she walked over to it and tapped the bulb a few times until it steadied of its own accord. "Hm . . ." she hummed in confusion to herself. Turning, she saw that there was more flickering light coming from the downstairs, sending a reflection up to the wall of the hallway. Curious now, she started down the stairs to investigate. _It's probably nothing,_ she told herself, _but still . . ._

Walking down the stairs, she saw that the source of the flickering light was the TV; it looked as though John had fallen asleep in front of it while watching an old war movie. Not exactly uncommon for him - she knew he still had trouble sleeping from his time in the Marines. _But if he's down here, then who was in . . ._ She gasped in realization and, without waiting another moment, raced back up the stairs to the nursery. "Sammy! Sammy!" she called, fear causing her heart to race. She reached the nursery door but stopped short, her eyes wide.

Mary's scream rang through the quiet house, jolting John from his dreams. "Mary?" he asked, fear seizing him. "Mary!" Leaping out of the chair, he rushed upstairs to his wife's aid. His thoughts immediately flew back to what she'd told him before they'd gone to bed, and he ran as fast as he could to the nursery.

"Daddy?" Alex asked, clutching her little stuffed tiger to her chest and standing in the doorway.

"Alex, stay there!" he called back over his shoulder as he dashed past her. He burst through the door of the nursery, frantically searching for his wife. "Mary?" he called, but the room was dark and silent. Noticing that Sam was still awake in his crib, he walked over and pushed down the side, smiling in relief at the baby. "Hey, Sammy. You okay?" he asked.

Sam flailed his arms, gazing up at his father with wide eyes. A drop of something dark landed on the mattress next to him. Frowning, John touched the substance, trying to determine what it was, when two more dripped onto his hand. _Blood,_ he realized with a jolt. _But where . . .?_ His thoughts trailed off as he turned around and looked up - and immediately wished he hadn't. For plastered to the ceiling, her blonde hair splayed out around her face, was Mary, his beautiful, amazing Mary. Her left leg was bent backwards at an awkward angle, and the stomach of her once-white nightgown was ripped and stained with blood. John felt his legs give out underneath him and he collapsed, staring up at his wife. She stared back at him, struggling to even breathe.

"No! Mary!" he screamed, trying to tell himself that it was only a nightmare. He had to be dreaming. This - this couldn't be real.

On the ceiling, Mary burst into flames, the orange tongues of fire licking hungrily at the plaster, devouring anything it touched. John couldn't seem to make anything on his body work, staring frozen at the fire spreading rapidly through the room. Amidst the roaring of the flames, he heard a shrill wail coming from the crib. _Sammy!_ he thought desperately. The realization that his son was in danger made his limbs unfreeze, and getting up, he scooped the baby out of his bed and ran out of the room.

In the hallway, he saw Dean and Alex coming towards him, Alex flat-out running to get to the room. "Mommy!" she shrieked, tears running down her face.

John stopped her before she could get to the nursery. "No, you can't go in there. You have to get out of here."

"But Mommy's still in there!" she said, hardly able to be understood through her sobs.

"Daddy?" Dean asked, his face showing panic and confusion.

"There's no time!" he said, then placed Sam in his brother's arms. "Take your brother and sister outside as fast as you can and don't look back! Now, Dean! Go!"

"No! Mommy!" Alex screamed again, fighting John to get into the nursery.

"Lix, come on! Daddy said we have to go!" Dean cried, then, holding Sam carefully, used one hand to tug his sister's pajama shirt.

"Daddy, please -" she begged, desperation in her voice.

"Alex, go with your brother. Now!" John commanded, leaving no room for argument. She gave him one last desperate glance before she and Dean ran out of the house.

With his children safely out of the way, he turned back to the nursery. The fire had spread so that it consumed the entire room. He couldn't even see his wife anymore. "Mary!" he screamed again. "No!"

Outside, Dean and Alex ran as fast as they could, turning back to look at the house. The room Sammy had been sleeping in was now gold from the light of the fire. "It's okay, Sammy," Dean heard himself whisper to his baby brother as he stopped in his tracks.

"De, come on!" she yelled at him, still crying. "You have to move!"

Out of nowhere, John appeared beside them, scooping up Dean and Sam as he ran. "I gotcha," he said, dashing over to his daughter. "Alex, move!" The little girl complied and they ran as far as they could just before the fire exploded out the window of the nursery.

The rest of the night was a blur for the little family. The Lawrence Fire Department was on the scene, with firefighters attempting to put out the still-burning house. Paramedics arrived in an ambulance at some point, preparing to check them for injuries. A police officer was waving away curious neighbors, telling them to stay back. Through all the activity, John Winchester and his children sat on the hood of his black Chevy Impala across the street. The firefighters might be able to repair some of the damage the house had suffered during the course of the night, but nothing could fix the gaping hole in the hearts of the family that the death of Mary Winchester had left behind. As Dean and Alex huddled as close as they could to their father, shivering and silent in the cold night air, John cradled his youngest in arms, pressing his lips to Sam's forehead. His eyes, however, were fixed on the house, his mind on revenge. Something had taken his wife from him, and he swore to himself that he would not rest until that thing had been found and destroyed. None on the scene that night could know that the disaster which had torn everything from them would be the start of years of endless training, hunting for Mary Winchester's murderer. They had no idea that in a few years' time, the little family clinging to each other on the hood of the Impala would be even more broken than they already were now, facing hardships no one could have dreamed of.

This was the end of their time as a family, and the beginning of a business that would change their lives forever.

The night of their greatest tragedy was like any other cold November night. It was also the night that started it all.


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1: The Girl in the Photograph**

" _Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect." -_ The Order of the Phoenix

 _22 years later - Lawrence, Kansas_

A small black trunk sat in the backseat of the 1967 Chevy Impala as a young man flipped through some old photographs. He came to one of three little kids - a boy holding a baby in his arms while a girl sat next to him - and, giving a slight, fond smile, looked up. "Thanks for these," he said to the young woman in front of him.

"Don't thank me, they're yours," the young woman - a single mother named Jenny - replied with a smile. The man - Dean Winchester - nodded, then tossed the pictures he'd been studying into the trunk and closed the car door. He looked across the street where the pale blue house sat unobtrusively on the manicured lawn. The front door was missing - parts of it were in a pile next to the staircase -, but that was the only sign that there had been anything strange happening here. Dean knew differently, though.

The house he was gazing at was the house he'd grown up in, the house where his mother had died in a mysterious fire. It was also home to Jenny and her two kids, Sari and Ritchie, all of whom had just survived a poltergeist attack. To anyone else, though, it was just an ordinary house that seemed to have an unfortunate string of accidents attached to it. But Dean and his brother Sam were not ordinary people. They were hunters, trained to seek and destroy any evil supernatural being since they were kids - like the poltergeist that had just tried to kill Jenny, Sari, and Ritchie. In their time, they'd seen and battled so many evil things, all in search of the creature that had started it all by murdering their mother. True, they'd committed some not-quite-legal acts and they were nowhere close to finding the bastard, but they had saved a lot of lives along the way. Even if they never got paid or thanked.

Dean took another glance at the young woman beside him. Hunting may be a thankless job, but in the end, as long as he could save some lives and kill some evil sons of bitches, that was good enough for him.

Across the street, Sam looked up from his perch on the steps to see Missouri Moseley - a local psychic who'd helped their dad after the fire - coming out of the house, purse in hand. She was a portly but motherly black woman with a fiery temper and a sassy attitude. Missouri had helped them to identify the poltergeist in their old house and helped get rid of it. "Well, there are no spirits in there anymore, this time for sure," she said as she sat down next to Sam.

"Not even my mom?" Sam asked.

Missouri paused, then shook her head sadly. "No."

The answer hit Sam like a ton of bricks. The poltergeist hadn't been the only spirit inside the old house. Upon further investigation, the brothers had discovered that the spirit of Mary Winchester still haunted the place where she had died, manifesting as a fiery figure until she'd been able to take form. To have seen his own mother in front of him for the first time in his memory, then have her ripped away from him again . . . He didn't think there were any words to justify the feelings that accompanied that thought. "What happened?" came the question. He'd been trying to make sense of the events from last night, and he still couldn't seem to wrap his head around it.

"Your mom's spirit and the poltergeist's energy, they cancelled each other out," she answered. "Your mom destroyed herself goin' after the thing."

"Why would she do something like that?" Sam asked again, still confused.

Missouri gave him a kind look. "Well, to protect her boys, of course."

Her answer made Sam look away, tears filling his eyes. His mother had died not just once, but twice, to save him. He couldn't even bring himself to say anything else. However, Missouri's voice came before he could even think of doing so. "Sam, I'm sorry," she said.

He looked over at her. "For what?"

"You sensed it was here, didn't you? Even when I couldn't."

Sam thought about how to answer that question, but nothing came to mind. "What's happening to me?" he asked, his voice small and pathetically child-like.

Missouri's face showed sadness when she looked at him again. "I know I should have all the answers, but I don't know," she replied.

"Sam, you ready?" came Dean's voice, ending the moment between the psychic and the hunter. Sam nodded to his brother, then took another glance at Missouri before walking over to the Impala. Jenny quickly thanked him as she passed by, to which he gave a quick nod as he prepared to get in the car.

"Don't you boys be strangers!" Missouri called to them.

"We won't," Dean replied.

She nodded knowingly and straightened her sweater. "See you 'round."

Jenny gave them a quick wave, then the boys got in the car and closed the doors with a solid BANG. The two brothers glanced at each other before Dean started up the ignition, causing the engine of the muscle car to growl as they pulled away from the curb and started down the street, away from the house that held so much pain.

In an older house not too far from the Winchesters' old place, Missouri Moseley closed her front door and walked through the hall, stopping before she got to the living room. Her breathing slightly labored, she set down her purse on the table and put one hand on her hip, thinking hard about what had happened. "That boy . . ." she said softly, seemingly to herself, ". . . he has such powerful abilities." Shaking her head, she set down her keys next to her purse and started into the living room. "But why he couldn't sense his own father, I have no idea."

There, on the living room sofa, sat a figure for whom the Winchester brothers had been searching for - John Winchester. Time and grief had aged him so that he was slightly more grizzled and careworn than before, but he was still the same man who had lost his wife all those years ago. Now he sat hunched over on the couch, elbows propped up on his knees, hands rubbing up and down his face until they came to rest over his nose and mouth for a second until they let go and came to a prayer position in front of him. He rubbed them together before he answered. "Mary's spirit -" he started, "- do you really think she saved the boys?"

Missouri paused for a moment before answering "I do." John nodded sadly in reply, then looked down at his left hand. The wedding band - still on his finger even twenty years after losing his wife - seemed to gleam in the dim light of the psychic's living room, and he twisted it thoughtfully, remembering Mary's beautiful face. "John Winchester, I could just slap you," Missouri said suddenly, sounding exasperated. "Why don't you go talk to your children?"

John shook his head slightly, feeling tears come to his eyes. "I want to. You have no idea how much I wanna see 'em." He paused for a moment as he thought about his boys. He felt awful leaving them alone to battle those monsters, but there was something so much bigger going on, something that they weren't even prepared for. "But I can't. Not yet." He looked over at her, and he could see in her eyes that she knew exactly what he was thinking of. "Not until I know the truth."

Sam flipped through the photographs as his brother drove the Impala through the tiny town. His father never talked about his mother, and Sam really had no idea what she looked like apart from pictures in his dad's hunting journal. After last night, though . . . he felt the need to see her face again, to take a good long look at it and really commit it to memory. He came to one of his parents hugging, both of them smiling at the camera, and he studied every last feature. His finger gently traced the outline of her head as his mind raced back to last night . . .

 _Dean raised the shotgun filled with rock salt at the advancing fiery figure, preparing to shoot. "No, don't! Don't!" Sam cried desperately._

" _What, why?" Dean asked in confusion._

" _Because I know who it is," Sam explained, staring at the figure before them. "I can see her now."_

 _After another few seconds, the fire cleared away, leaving the figure of Mary Winchester in its wake - whole and untouched, exactly as she had been the night of her death. The gun shook in Dean's hand and he lowered it slowly, his expression softening at the apparition before him. The spirit smiled serenely at him as he struggled to find the right words. ". . . Mom," he whispered, staring in disbelief at her._

 _Mary walked closer to him, her smile widening. "Dean," she said, her voice echoing in the manner that spirits tended to speak. He looked close to crying as her blue eyes studied him proudly for a moment, then skipped past him to a spot just between the two boys. For the briefest of seconds, her expression changed from confusion to sadness as she seemed to search for a person who simply wasn't there, then it became serene again. She walked past her oldest, her eyes now fixed on her youngest, the boy currently pinned by the poltergeist to the cabinet wall. Sam struggled not to cry as he looked at his mother for the first time in his memory. "Sam," she said, also giving him a smile._

 _He smiled and closed his eyes, allowing a tear to sneak out before opening them again. His mother was here before him for quite possibly the first and last time. He didn't want to miss a moment of this. She studied him for a few seconds before her expression turned sad. "I'm sorry," she added._

 _Sam shook his head, confused. "For what?" he asked gently._

 _She didn't answer, instead choosing to give him one last meaningful look before taking a step back and turning, her movements blurring in the normal spirit way for the briefest of moments, then taking another few steps forward. Her eyes fixed on the ceiling at something the brothers couldn't see. "You get out of my house," she said, her tone authoritative. "And let go of my son." With that said, she burst into flames again, the heat forcing the brothers to turn their faces slightly, and she burned up for a few seconds until her figure disappeared. The fire spread up to the ceiling, striking the invisible thing before vanishing. With a gasp, Sam was released as the poltergeist died._

 _Sam took a few shaky steps forward, his breath coming in pants as he tried to determine what had just happened. Dean looked around, his eyes wide, searching for his mother's apparition. However, Sam knew that she was gone. She wouldn't be coming back again. "Now it's over," he said quietly, tears glistening in the dim light._

Sam released a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding in, trying his hardest not to cry again. Sniffling, he moved the picture to the back of the pile then stopped as he came to another. In the photograph was the entire Winchester family - Mary holding Baby Sam, standing next to John and Little Dean in front of their old house. He'd seen this picture before in his dad's journal. However, there was something different about this one, apart from the fact that his dad's version was more weathered. In the bottom, next to where Dean was standing, was a little girl around the same age as his brother, cuddling a stuffed tiger to her chest and smiling shyly at the camera. Looking carefully, Sam realized that she was like a miniature version of his mom - blonde curls, blueish-gray eyes, oval face, defined cheekbones. He had a feeling that if this girl was older, she'd practically be his mother's twin. But there was something that didn't make sense. This was the first time he was seeing this girl. In his dad's picture, the spot where she was standing now was burned away. Frowning, he flipped the picture over and found neat cursive writing penciled in on the back: _The Winchesters. John, Mary, Dean, Alex, and Little Sammy._

"Hey Dean?" he asked.

"Yeah?"

"Does the name 'Alex' mean anything to you?"

There was silence for a few seconds from his brother's end. "Where'd you hear that?" he asked, his emotion unreadable from his tone.

"Nowhere. I, uh, I was just lookin' through some pictures. You know that picture in Dad's journal of us in front of the house when we were little?"

"Yeah, what about it?"

"Well, I just found another copy of it in here. Except where the burn mark on Dad's is, there's a little girl. Looks about the same age as you in this one. And on the back, there's a name - Alex."

The silence from Dean prompted Sam to look up at him, but what he saw concerned him. His normally unflappable brother, the one who could kill just about anything evil that he found and still sleep at night, was staring straight in front of him, his knuckles white from how hard he was gripping the steering wheel. His eyes glimmered with unshed tears as he swallowed hard, his face taking on the same expression it had when Sam had told him they needed to go back to Lawrence. "Dean?" he asked, worried now for his big brother. If he was showing any emotion other than cocky, then something was seriously wrong. "What is it?"

He stayed silent for another few seconds before he answered. "Nothing. Forget about it, okay?"

"What? No, why would I do that?"

"Because it's not important, Sam. I said forget about it."

"No, I think that it is. You just don't want to talk about it."

"Yeah? Then why do you keep bringing it up?"

"Because I want to know what's going on, Dean! That girl definitely wasn't in the picture that Dad had, and now that she is, you're getting all defensive all of a sudden? This isn't like you, man! Something about this girl is bothering you big time, not to mention the fact that she's pictured with our family and I don't remember seeing her when we were kids."

"You don -" he started, then abruptly stopped himself, muttering something under his breath that sounded suspiciously along the lines of 'too young.' "Look, we're done talking about this, okay?"

"I'm not!"

"Well, I am!"

Sam managed to refrain from saying anything else. His brother had that tone, the one that said he wasn't going to budge on the subject, and Sam knew that arguing with him wouldn't do any good. Resigned, he released a long sigh as he looked down at the picture again, studying the face of the mysterious young girl. One question kept running through his head; who was she that she could get his brother into this state?

The car slowed as they pulled up to the motel they'd been staying in while they had been working on the case, and the brothers got out of the car, Sam carrying the little black trunk. He unlocked the door and they went inside, setting down their things on the bed. They barely had any time to relax before Dean's phone began to ring. Cursing, he began searching his pockets for his phone, pulling out instead a piece of paper which he tossed aside without so much as a glance. Not finding it, he began searching the duffel bag for the annoying device, at last locating and answering it. As he paced and talked to whoever was on the phone, Sam walked over to the bed and picked up the paper, studying it curiously. There it was again: the name Alex with a set of coordinates and an address, written in the same handwriting as was on the back of the picture.

"Friggin' telemarketers," Dean growled in annoyance as he hung up the phone and tossed it back on the bed. It took a couple of seconds before he realized his brother was completely absorbed in the paper. "What? What is it?" he asked.

"Dean, I think you should come see this," Sam replied, still staring at the scrap in his hands. Curious now, Dean walked over and caught sight of what his brother was holding, stopping when he was close enough to read it. "It's that name again, in the same handwriting that was on the back of the picture," Sam explained. "And there's coordinates. Whoever this Alex is, I think someone wants us to try and find her."

Dean stared at the scrap in his brother's hands, his expression blank. "No," he said, his voice no more than a whisper.

Sam looked up at him, shocked by his response. "What?"

"I said no, Sam. We're not gonna go looking for her."

"Why not? If someone's gone to the trouble of leaving us coordinates, that must mean she's important enough to try to find, right?"

"Forget it. I already told you, we're not talking about this. Get your bag packed. Check-out's in half an hour."

Sam stared at his brother in disbelief as he paced the room, pulling their stuff together. "What is _with_ you, man?" he asked.

"Nothing. I'm just peachy. Bag packed, now."

"Not until you tell me what's going on. Look, someone leaves us coordinates in the same style that Dad does, and you just want to blatantly disregard it because of some girl who was in a picture with us when we were kids?"

"It's not like that."

"Then what is it like? Why are you so hesitant to find this girl?"

"Because she's dead, that's why!"

That statement caught Sam off-guard, and he physically stopped and stared at his brother until Dean sat down heavily on the bed, his whole expression reading 'tired.' Sam waited for him to start talking; if there was one thing he'd learned while hunting with his brother, it was that sometimes he couldn't be pushed to reveal what was bothering him. He would discuss it when he was ready. Sure enough, Dean took a deep breath and started talking. "When we were little," he began, sounding hesitant, "we had this sister. Alex. She was . . ." He gave a brief chuckle. "Well, to tell you the truth, she was the closest thing I ever had to a friend. Closest thing you ever had to a mom, too."

"How did she die?" Sam asked softly.

Dean paused, his face taking on a blank expression again. "There was an accident."

"An accident?"

Dean nodded. "Dad took us with him on a hunting trip. She got in the way."

"Why would she do that?"

Dean gave a soft but broken smile. "To protect him. He was in over his head, and she knew it. So she got him out. Put herself in."

Sam released a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding in, feeling tears well up in his eyes. "Why don't I remember her?" he asked.

"You were pretty little when she died - around four, I think."

"And you never once told me about her, even after all these years."

"I couldn't. Dad didn't want me to mention her anymore. I think it was too painful for him." He shook his head. "I dunno, Sammy, he changed after her death. We all did. In a way . . . it was almost like losing Mom all over again."

His brother's admission hit him like a punch in the gut. All Sam could do was stare as tears started rolling down Dean's face. Dean never cried. Whatever had happened to their sister, it must still be haunting him. Quickly, Dean wiped away the tears and sniffed, trying to maintain a shred of dignity despite the fact that he'd let his vulnerable side show. "So we stopped talking about her," he continued. "Tried to forget that she even existed. Or at least, Dad did. I never could. It was the one time I questioned Dad's orders."

Sam tried not to show his surprise at that statement. Dean never questioned Dad's orders, either. It was like he was looking at a whole different person. Not quite sure how to respond to that statement, he waited to see if his brother would say anything else, but he stayed silent, lost in his own thoughts. At last, Sam could no longer keep quiet. "Dean," he started, "you know we have to check this out. Finding the picture with her in it and now this note, these can't be coincidences."

Dean nodded. "Yeah. I know we do." 

"Alright, so I found where the coordinates point to," Dean said as they sat in a cafe in town. Sam looked away from his computer screen for a few seconds to see that his brother had circled a name on the map. "This town called Berwyn in Pennsylvania, about forty minutes north of Philly."

"Checks out with the address," Sam agreed, taking a sip of his latte.

"And the people who own it?"

"The McCabe family - couple Jonathan and Elise with their four kids, Jamie, Michael, Bridget, and Alexa. All four were adopted. And get this. The year that Alexa was adopted? 1987."

"That was the year Alex died."

"Exactly."

"What else does it say on the family?"

"Not much," Sam continued, scrolling through whatever page he was currently on. "Dad Jonathan was studying to be a doctor, completed his residency from '84 to '87 at Provena Saint Joseph Medical Center in Joliet, then got a job in Berwyn at the local hospital and moved his family to Pennsylvania. Mom Elise worked as a temp right out of college in Joliet, then as a secretary in the same hospital as her husband when they moved to Berwyn."

"Is there any way you can access the hospital's files?" Dean asked, leaning towards the screen.

"Give me a minute." He clicked away on his laptop, his eyes glued to the screen. Dean returned to the beer in his hand and took a long swig from the bottle, knowing that he would need the alcohol before this day was done. He was about to go in for a second swig when - "Holy crap," came Sam's shocked voice.

"What? What is it?" Dean asked quickly.

"Jonathan was preparing to go into pediatrics. During his residency, it says he worked under a Dr. Sekellek and that he was 'highly motivated, very dedicated to his work.'"

"So the guy liked sticking kids with needles. Don't see what's so special about that."

"Right, but listen to this. In his reports, Dr. Sekellek noticed that Jonathan had a special talent for pediatric surgery, and a lot of times he had him sit in on the procedures. One of those was a case in '87, just before he got the new job in Berwyn. After that, there's a note that he 'changed radically' and that he was caught trying to break into the filing system. The hospital was actually thinking about firing him when he got the new job and moved."

Dean's brow furrowed. "Can you pull up a picture of him?"

Sam complied and clicked a few more buttons, pulling up a dated image on the screen. It showed a young man in his late twenties or early thirties with pristine black hair, glasses, and a doctor's coat. He was attempting what looked like a smile at the camera. "That's him."

"I recognize him," he said. "That's the guy who operated on Alex."

Sam looked up at him in surprise. "You're sure?"

"Positive." Moving quickly now, he chugged the rest of his beer before setting the empty bottle on the table, retrieving his coat and his keys. "Come on, Sammy, we need to leave."

"Where are we going?"

"To go get Alex back. If your crazy theory is right and she's somehow still alive, we need to find her right now."

Moving slower, he closed his laptop and put it back in the bag, giving his brother a suspicious look. "Ooookay, but why the sudden rush?"

Dean paused and turned to Sam. "Because I think she's in danger. And if we don't get her out of there . . ." He couldn't even continue, his sentence trailing off as his expression became softer, more wounded and vulnerable. Sam immediately understood. "So, you comin' or what?" he asked, finding his voice again.

Sam took a breath and nodded. "Alright," he said. "Looks like we're going to Berwyn."


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: Family Reunion**

" _Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike." -_ Order of the Phoenix

 _Berwyn, Pennsylvania_

The Impala growled as they pulled up to the curb, slowing to a stop. Dean cut the engine and looked out at the house before them. It was a pretty normal-looking home - two stories high with yellow siding, a normal brown pointed roof, and a two-car garage. The surrounding area was a typical suburbanite neighborhood, pretty, wooded, and peaceful. It was, in a sense, perfect.

"I don't like it," he stated.

Sam looked up from the map and leaned over the seat, glancing out to where his brother was gazing. "What's not to like?" he asked rhetorically. "It's a pretty normal suburban neighborhood."

"Exactly. Everything's perfect here. Too perfect. Gives me the creeps."

In any other case, Sam would have laughed at his paranoid big brother. However, he kept silent. He knew that this disregard for normal life was just a cover-up, a way of hiding how he was really feeling inside. Besides, he happened to agree with Dean for once. The whole area was just a little too quiet, a little too perfect.

Silently, he waited until Dean made the first move, which he did after a few minutes of impatient waiting. Still muttering murderously under his breath about the perfectness of the area, he opened the door and stepped out onto the street, Sam following close behind. One after another, the doors of the Impala slammed shut, breaking the quiet atmosphere for only a moment before the sound was swallowed up by whatever spell the neighborhood seemed to be under. Together, the brothers walked up the long driveway (" _Who the hell needs a driveway this long, anyway?"_ came the grumble) and towards the dark red door.

"Don't know how she managed to spend all these years in a place like this," Dean muttered as they rang the doorbell.

"If she's still alive," Sam replied quietly.

"Yeah, don't remind me."

Sam didn't have time to even formulate a reply before the door swung suddenly open. Standing there was a young woman, about Dean's age, wearing jeans and a black AC/DC band t-shirt. She was shorter than the brothers by at least half a foot, slender with dark brown hair pulled back in a high ponytail. Blueish-gray eyes gazed up at them with a blank, expectant expression. "Can I help you?" she asked.

For a moment, Dean just stared at her as Sam started to come up with some cock-and-bull cover story - possibly about how they were police, just coming to ask a few questions. He felt his mouth go dry. It was her. Her hair had changed color, but it was definitely her. How she was still alive, he had no idea. As he became aware that his brother was still coming up with a cover story, he quickly interjected and snapped himself out of his daze. "We're the McDonnell brothers, just moved in a few streets down," he said with a big faked smile. "We're just kind of going door to door, trying to get to know the neighbors, and we thought we'd stop by for a bit."

Sam gave his brother a quick look, but then hurriedly smiled and tried to confirm that what he'd just said was true. Surprise showed on the woman's face for a few moments before she covered it up. "Oh," she said. "Well, uh, welcome to the neighborhood. Do you, uh, do you wanna come in for a minute? It's kind of cold out there."

"If-if that's okay with you. We don't wanna inconvenience you or anything -"

"No, no, it's fine. My parents are both at work and I wouldn't mind the company. It gets pretty quiet here by myself."

The brothers shot each other a look, then smiled back at her again. "Well, if you'll have us, then we'd love to entertain you for a bit," Dean replied.

She smiled, then opened the door a bit more so they could come in. After they had both crossed into the house, she closed and locked the door behind them as they gazed around and got a feel for the area. "Nice place," Dean commented appreciatively. And it was. The hallway they were standing in was wooded floor with two different rooms on either side and a staircase before them. The stairs themselves were covered with white carpet and a wooden banister ran the entire length of the steps. The ceiling was vaulted so that it reached to the top of the house, high above their heads, giving the whole place an airy feel.

"Thanks," she said. "It's my parents' house. I'm just crashing here for the weekend."

"You have another house?" Sam asked, finally joining the conversation.

"An apartment, actually, in Philly. I went to Temple for college and I really liked the city, so I stuck around."

"Nice."

Walking further into the house, they came into an eat-in kitchen with a large wooden table off to one side. The walls were painted a brighter yellow than the siding and all the equipment looked newly cleaned. An island, covered with all sorts of papers and other clutter, stood in the middle of the linoleum floor. Glancing over to the left, just past the fridge, was a family room painted a terracotta red. A flat-screen TV sat in a place of honor on the opposite wall from the couch, with a fireplace in the smaller wall between them. The whole place had a homey, lived-in feel to it that Dean and Sam immediately distrusted.

A delicious smell wafted from the black oven and a grin lit Dean's face. "Is that apple pie?"

"Yup," the woman proclaimed with a look of pride on her face. "Still baking, though, so you won't be able to have any for a little while yet."

"You make apple pie?" Dean asked in disbelief.

"Sure do. That is, if I don't burn it. I'm convinced that I somehow pissed off the oven and now it's being temperamental."

Inside, Dean was chuckling. Yup, still the same as when they were growing up. Outside, however, he merely cracked another grin. "Well, if you need a taster, I will volunteer myself for the cause," he replied with a mock-serious air.

Behind him, he could practically hear Sam rolling his eyes as the woman struggled to contain the smile attempting to spread across her face. "I'll keep that in mind," she said.

Sam cleared his throat. "So, Miss . . ." He trailed off.

"Alexa," she answered.

He nodded. "Alexa. How long have you and your parents lived here?"

She frowned and leaned back against the island, her brow furrowed in concentration. "I don't know," she replied. "I think I might have been about seven when we moved here. I don't really remember."

The brothers shot each other a quick look. "And how do you like it here?" Sam pressed.

A brief, indescribable expression flashed across her face only for a moment before it became blank again. She then shrugged. "It's alright," she said. "It's a good place to grow up - nice and quiet, safe. Nothing really happens here, unless you count a few gossips talking about what's going on at so-and-so's place and a bunch of rugrats running around on Halloween." She laughed a bit at her own joke but quickly stopped when all she got was a weak chuckle from Dean.

Sam was about to go on when Dean cleared his throat, shooting his brother a look. He got the hint and changed his tune. "Sorry, but do-do you think I could use your bathroom?" he asked as nonchalantly as possible.

Whether it was his brother's superb acting skills (Dean rolled his eyes mentally at the thought) or the subtle puppy-dog face he used, Alexa didn't seem to notice the awkward exchange between the brothers. She blinked a few times and offered a polite smile. "Uh, sure. Up the stairs, first door on the left."

Sam nodded. "Thanks." And with that, he walked with long, brisk strides towards the staircase, nudging his brother as he passed.

At last, it was just them alone, Dean and Alexa. For a while, neither of them spoke, simply sitting there in an awkward silence as Dean studied her. Apart from the color of her hair, she really hadn't changed much since he had last seen her. She even had the same silver bracelet that Dad had given her as a kid - Mom's bracelet, with all the funky charms and symbols hanging from the thin silver band. At last, she cleared her throat. "So, Mr. McDonnell, can I get you something to drink? There's coffee brewing, there's beer out in the other fridge, and there's water in that . . . jug . . . thingy." She ended with a vague pointing motion in the direction of the jug that sat on the counter.

Dean couldn't help but chuckle a little. "No thanks, I'm not that thirsty."

She nodded. "Right. Okay. That - that's good." There was another pause, this one shorter. "So, what made you and your brother decide to move out here? Don't take this the wrong way, but you two don't exactly seem like the, y'know, suburbia type."

"Ah, well, you know how persuasive little brothers can be," he said with a forced cocky tone. "As soon as he saw the house, he had to have it and wouldn't take no for an answer."

She laughed at that. "Yeah, tell me about it. This place . . . it's a nice area to grow up, but . . . I dunno, it's just too peaceful for my taste. That's why I love the city. There's always something going on." She looked like she was about to go on, but she stopped herself with a smile and a shake of her head. "I'm sorry, you're not here to listen to me babble about my life."

"Nah, don't worry about it. To tell you the truth, you actually remind me a lot of someone I used to know. She didn't like the quiet either. It always kinda put her on edge, you could say."

"Well, I think I know how she feels."

Another pause, then she reached for a mug that was sitting in the drying rack and went to pour herself a cup (presumably of coffee, but he wasn't quite sure) from a French press sitting on the stove top. However, it slipped from her hands and fell to the floor, shattering into a million pieces. "Shit!" she exclaimed, then bent down to try and clean up the mess.

"Here, let me help you with that," Dean offered, coming over and sweeping the shards into the palm of his hand.

"Thanks," she mumbled, not willing to look up at him.

As they continued to gather any pieces that they found into a pile, Dean glanced over and noticed that there was a necklace dangling from her neck, a necklace that looked incredibly familiar. The pendant was a five-point star surrounded by a circle, wrought in what looked to be pewter and hanging from a black silk cord. He almost gasped at the sight but thankfully caught himself in time. Even after almost twenty years, she still had that damn thing? He couldn't believe that she had kept it all this time. Straightening to his full height, he focused his gaze on her face in order to keep it from wandering to her chest where the pendant rested. "What do you want me to do with this?" he asked.

"Just give it to me, I'll have to glue it back together later." She sighed. "My mom's gonna kill me; that was her favorite mug."

"It was just an accident. I'm sure she'll understand."

"Let's hope so."

A sympathetic smile on his lips, he dumped the shards he had cleaned up off the floor into her hands. "That's a cool necklace, by the way," he commented.

She looked at him in surprise, then glanced down at her chest to see that the necklace had fallen out of her shirt. "Oh, thanks," she replied with a smile. "I have to keep it hidden from my parents. They think it's some Satanic thing and that I'll go to Hell if I wear it."

Dean couldn't help it - he actually chuckled. "Well, I can tell you right now that's a load of crap. It's called a pentagram and it's actually a symbol of protection against evil. Really powerful stuff. Whoever gave you that must have cared about you a lot."

Immediately her eyes were back on him again. "How do you know all that?" she asked, seeming suspicious.

He shrugged nonchalantly. "I do a lot of reading."

As soon as he said it, he wished he had thought of a better excuse. One, he was starting to sound like Sam. Two, she didn't look like she was buying it. However, something about what he had said seemed to have triggered her because she became very pale and her hands started to shake, despite how she tried to hide it. She turned her back on him, grabbing the counter for support. Dean felt his heart speed up a little in his chest; was she remembering? He would have to risk it. They had already taken far too long to get to this point. Every second they wasted here made it more likely that the bastards who had kidnapped her would come back and find them. He wouldn't let that happen, not again, not to her.

Deciding to take the chance, he cleared his throat a little and steeled himself. "It's funny, though," he began. "I had this friend - well, she was more like my sister, actually - and she had a necklace exactly like that. And she loved it. Man, I never thought a kid like her could love something so much. But she did." He watched her carefully and saw that her body had stiffened. Taking that as a good sign, he plowed on with his story. "Y'know, it's gotta be something like nineteen years since I saw her last, but I can still remember the day I bought it for her. She was so happy I thought she was gonna bounce all the way to the moon. She also said something to me, something I can never forget. You wanna know what she said?" He paused. No answer from her. "Well, she said that it was -"

"- the greatest gift anyone had ever given me," she finished slowly, almost as if in a trance. Dean's heart nearly stopped as she turned to face him, blue eyes shining with tears. She remembered. She remembered him. "De?" she asked softly, not daring to go above a whisper.

He swallowed the lump in his throat. Damn it, he wasn't going to cry, he was _not_ going to cry. "Hey, Lix."

Alex only hesitated for a moment before tackling him with a huge hug, almost knocking him over. He had forgotten how strong she was, especially when she was upset, but it didn't matter now. The important thing was that his little sister was safe and back in his arms, and she wasn't going to leave him again. He held her tightly against him as her shoulders shook from the force of her sobs, a few tears of his own slipping past his defenses. "Shh, shh," he soothed, rocking her back and forth. "It's okay. I've got you, Lix."

"Ni-nineteen y-y-years," she managed to stutter out. "I w-waited nine-teen y-years fo-r y-you. Y-you n-n-never came b-back for me-e."

"I know. I know, and I am so, so sorry." And he was. He was sorry for every single damn day she had spent trapped in here, away from them. Away from him.

She pulled back and looked him in the eye, angrily wiping away her tears. "Why didn't you come looking for me?" she demanded.

Stopping her furious motions, he gently brushed away the remaining droplets she had missed before. "I didn't know you were alive," he admitted. "When Dad came back from the hospital . . ." He swallowed hard and turned his gaze downward, unable to face her any longer. ". . . He told us that . . . that you were dead . . . that they hadn't been able to save you . . ." He cleared his throat and looked back up at her. "I swear, if I had known you were alive, I wouldn't have stopped searching until I found you and gotten you away from here."

She gave him a thin smile and hugged him again tightly. "Hey, it's not your fault," she reassured him. "I'm just glad I have my big brother back. I missed you."

"I missed you too, Lix," he whispered back, his voice breaking from his tears. "So much."

"Ahem."

Both of them whipped around to find Sam standing in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest. "Hope I'm not interrupting anything," he said with a raised eyebrow.

"Ah, shut up, Sammy," Dean retorted, regaining his earlier cocky attitude.

Alex's eyes widened. "Nuh-uh," she breathed. "No way that's my little Sammy."

Sam flushed a deep red at the sound of his nickname. "Actually, it's just Sam," he murmured, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.

She laughed incredulously before dashing over to him and tackling him with a hug. He, too, staggered backwards from the force of impact. Dean couldn't help but chuckle as he watched his giant of a little brother glance around uncomfortably. "Alright, Lix," he said with a chuckle, realizing that he was going to have to bail his brother out of this one, "let him breathe. He's still getting used to the idea of having a big sister."

She froze at that and released him slowly, turning back to face Dean. "What do you mean, getting used to it?" she asked incredulously. "He remembers me, doesn't he?" She glanced back at Sam, who gave her an almost guilty look. "You do remember me, don't you, Sam?"

He sighed. "I'm sorry, but I don't."

Her face fell at that. "But – but you were four when it happened . . . when I left . . . You were old enough to remember . . ."

Dean released a long breath and put his hand on her shoulder. "Lix, even if he does, it's going to take a while. Dad . . . well, it was even worse than losing Mom. He tried to make us forget that you had even existed because it was too much for him to bear. First Mom, then you . . . it tore him apart, Lix. It tore all of us apart."

Her expression became blank so fast that it scared him, much more than any creature he hunted ever would. It was an expression that said she had lost all faith in Dad, maybe even in him. After a few moments, though, she sighed and her face cleared again. "So, why now?" she asked. "If you thought I was dead, what made you come looking for me now? And how did you know where to find me?"

Sam and Dean glanced at each other, coming to a silent decision before they turned back to their long-lost sister. "Actually, we're still not quite sure how we found you," Dean replied. "But someone knew you were alive and sent us to find you. And . . . we need your help."

She looked at them incredulously. "My help?"

"Dad, well, he's gone missing."

There was that blank expression again. "So he's just gotten a little too involved in whatever case he's gone on. He'll turn up eventually, just like always."

"I thought the same thing when Dean found me," Sam admitted. "But we checked the last gig he worked - a Woman in White down near Jericho, California - he didn't even finish the job."

"We also found this," Dean added, pulling out a familiar weather-beaten object from the inside of his jacket. Alex's eyes widened in recognition.

"Is that . . . ?" she asked.

"Yeah, Dad's journal," Dean affirmed.

"He never lets that thing out of his sight," she said, looking suspicious.

"Exactly. Which is why we need your help. We think he's in real trouble and we need to find him."

"Look," Sam jumped in, "I can completely understand if you don't want to help us. But someone went to the trouble of giving us your exact location. That's gotta be pretty significant, right?"

"Please, Lix," Dean took over again. "We can't do this without you."

Her eyes gazed at the floor for a few moments as she seemed to consider what they were saying, then looked back up at them. Dean didn't like what he saw. Instead of the warm, happy expression that used to always be there, he only saw a blank stare, a cold and empty void. "No," she said, her voice soft but defiant.

He stared at her in disbelief. "No?"

"I'm sorry, but I can't help you."

There was a brief pause. Dean couldn't bring himself to answer her, so Sam answered for him. "But . . . but we came all this way to find you -"

"I already gave you my answer," she replied, her voice louder and harder this time. Her eyes focused on the boys for a few seconds, then dropped back to the floor as she began to turn away from them. "I think you should leave."

Something inside Dean snapped as she started to walk away from them, and within a few seconds his hand had darted out and grabbed her by her wrist. She stopped in her tracks, refusing to look at him. "Let go of me," she growled, her voice low and threatening, completely unlike how she had spoken before.

"No," Dean said simply.

Impatiently she tried to tug her hand free, but this time Dean's desperation overpowered Alex's natural strength. "I said let go, dammit!" she shouted at him.

"And I'm telling you no," he replied with just as much heat. "I just got you back, Alex. There's no way in hell I'm letting you go again."

At last she looked back at him, her eyes finally showing feeling. And that feeling was anger. "Oh really? _Now_ you go all protective big brother?" she asked, her voice sarcastic. "Where were you when I needed this eighteen years ago? Where was Dad? He _left_ me, Dean! Do you have _any_ idea what that's like, to be left behind like that?! Why the hell should I help him when he didn't even _try_ to find me?!"

"Because we're family!" Dean shot back. "And don't you _dare_ say that about Dad! You didn't see him in the aftermath, losing you destroyed him!"

"Both of you, shut up!" Sam yelled. The two older siblings paused in their argument to glare at Sam. "Alex, I know you feel like Dad abandoned you - I get that, totally understand that feeling - and you have every right to feel like that. So if you don't want to get involved because you have a problem with Dad, then fine. Don't do it for him. Do it for us, the ones who actually came and found you. Dean's right: we're family, and now that we've all found each other again, we need to stick together."

There was a heavy silence as Sam's words sank in until Dean spoke up again. "Lix, please," he begged her. "I'm sorry it took so long to find you, I really am. But if you want me to start making it up to you like I should, then I'm going to need you to start by trusting me and helping us." He looked at her imploringly. "We really can't do this without you."

"Bullshit," she retorted. "You've been doing fine before you figured out I was alive. You can find Dad by yourselves."

"Yeah, well, I don't want to," Dean admitted.

Alex paused for another few moments, weighing her options. After what seemed like an eternity, something in her features changed again and she stopped fighting. "Alright," she relented. "You win. I'll help you find Dad. But I am _not_ getting back into that business again."

"Fine," Dean ground out. He didn't want to fight her anymore, not after she'd agreed to help them. "As soon as we find Dad, you can go right back to your apple-pie life and we won't bother you again."

"Fine!" Alex replied, then paused. "Now would you please let go of my wrist?"

Dean blinked and realized that he was still holding his sister's wrist in a vice grip. Releasing it, he cleared his throat as Alex rubbed it. "Thanks," she mumbled. "Now, if you'll excuse me."

"Where are you going?" Sam asked as she made her way towards the staircase.

"To pack," was her reply. "If I'm coming along on this crazy goose chase, then I'm going to need some things." And without another word she was walking up the stairs, away from them.

There was a moment of silence as both brothers gazed at the place where she had been. Dean blew out a huge breath and Sam swallowed hard. "Well . . ." he began, not really sure what to say. ". . . Could've been worse."

"Yeah, but it sure could've been a hell of a lot better," Dean said.

"Still, she agreed to help us. We got all the Winchester kids back together again, mission accomplished."

"Except she's not staying. As soon as we get Dad back, she takes off again."

Sam glanced over at his brother. To anyone else, Dean's expression would be completely unreadable, given how he was simply staring at where she had disappeared. However, Sam knew his brother well enough to see that behind those blank green eyes there sat a lot of pain. He swallowed hard, trying to think of something encouraging to say and coming up with nothing. Instead, he mumbled something along the lines of "we'll figure something out" and suggested Dean get the car started. The McCabes would be back soon and the longer they stayed, the more uneasy Sam felt. Dean must have felt the same way (or else he just REALLY wanted to avoid any form of communication) because he went without a remark.

Not even two minutes after he had gone back to the car Alex jogged back down the stairs, a duffel bag and a drawstring pouch slung over one shoulder. She now had a weather-beaten leather jacket on over top of a dark gray sweatshirt. "Where's Dean?" she asked, glancing around.

"Getting the car started," Sam answered, still slightly uncomfortable.

She nodded. "Good." A few moments passed in silence. "We should get going, wouldn't want to make Princess Deanna wait." She then proceeded to march out the door, leaving Sam to trail along behind her.

Sam had to physically bite his lip to hold back his chuckle. _Ouch._ He realized that tensions were still high between his two older siblings, but _damn_ that was a good insult. It might even be worth the extra time he would have to listen to them argue. As he walked outside and watched Dean and Alex awkwardly interact with each other, he was surprised to find that he felt . . . less alone, somehow. It was as if part of a hole he didn't even realize he had was somehow filled just by having his sister back. He reflected on that thought. _Sister . . ._ Come to think of it, he'd always wanted a sister growing up. Now he would get to see first-hand what having one would be like.

Sam climbed into the car in his usual seat in the front passenger side and looked back in the rearview mirror. Alex was gazing out the window, looking back at her house. He wondered what she was thinking about. Was she angry at Dean for ripping her away from her life after all this time? Was she sad that she was leaving her family behind? Nostalgic from all the times she had probably spent in this very car? Sam didn't know, but he did know one thing: having Alex along was going to make things interesting.


	4. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3: The New Job**

" _Curiosity is not a sin . . . but we should exercise caution with our curiosity." -_ The Goblet of Fire

 _Berwyn, Pennsylvania_

"Well, here we are," Dean said, pushing open the door with a grand sweeping gesture. "Home sweet home."

The motel room in front of them was just like any other crappy motel room they had ever stayed in: cheap but made to look fancier than it actually was. The beds were covered in deep red striped quilts folded over the pillows. The carpet and the lampshades were the same shade of red and the wallpaper was a texture reminiscent of bark. A table with a few chairs were stuffed into one corner and another door led off to the bathroom on the opposite side. The only other pieces of furniture were the nighttables by each of the beds and a couch across from them.

Alex glanced around as she followed her brothers into the room. "Lovely," she commented sarcastically, her face twisting at how gaudy and tacky it was.

Sam gave her a sympathetic look as they plopped their things on the beds. "You'll get used to it."

She shook her head wistfully. "I can't believe we used to sleep in places like this," she commented as she sat on one of the beds.

"You mean _you_ used to," Dean replied. " _I_ never stopped."

Raising her hands in a pacifying gesture, she fell silent and studied the room again, only to stop in her tracks. "Speaking of sleeping . . . who's getting the beds?"

The brothers stopped and looked at each other. It was obvious neither of them had thought this far ahead, considering that they were giving each other 'deer in the headlights' stares. "Alright, fine. I'll take the couch," she said after a few minutes of silence on their end.

"Lix -" Dean started.

"It's fine, De," she interrupted with a careless wave. "You two get the beds, I'll take the couch."

Dean gave her the death glare for a few moments before sighing. "Fine. I'll go look for some extra blankets." Crossing the room, he went into the bathroom, searching for any place where extra sheets might be hiding.

Sam let the silence continue for a few moments after Dean left, hoping that Alex would continue the conversation. However, seeing as she elected to stay quiet, he decided that he would have to be the one to break the silence. "So, feels weird, huh? Having to stay in crappy motels again?"

"Feels like I never left," she replied. "Except, y'know, for the fact that Dad's not here and my two brothers are huge." Sam chuckled at this as she grinned at him. "So what happens now?"

Sam released a big breath. "Well, now we dig through every source we have, try and find Dad. Hopefully something turns up." He looked back up only to find her studying him carefully. "What?"

"Nothing, just . . . you're not the same little boy I used to dote over."

"Well, you're not exactly the same little girl who nearly peed herself watching horror movies," Dean called, exiting the bathroom with a pile of dark red sheets.

Sam snickered as Alex looked at her big brother with indignation. "Come on, De, that was ONE time! And besides, you weren't any better, Mister Big Shot. If I recall, Mom and Dad found YOU shivering under the blankets clinging to a baseball bat."

"But, I was smart about it. That's what counts." Dean tossed the sheets onto the couch and sat down in one of the wooden chairs. He took out the worn journal and opened it to the first page. "Alright, let's get to work. Sammy, why don't you try calling around, see if one of Dad's old contacts has seen him. I'll see if he left any clues in his journal. Lix, if you're going to be hunting with us for a while, you'd better brush up on your training." He tossed her a pistol and oil cloth, which she caught with ease. "Start by taking apart the pistol and cleaning it."

She rolled her eyes but quietly got to work as Sam started dialing some of their father's old contacts. About an hour passed as the siblings worked on their own respective projects. By the time Alex had successfully disassembled and reassembled the gun twice, Sam was finishing calling a few of their father's closest friends.

"No, Dad was in California last we heard from him. We just thought, he comes to you for 'munitions, maybe you've seen him in the last few weeks. Just call us if you hear anything . . . Thanks." _Beep._

"Caleb hasn't heard from him?" Dean asked, looking back down at the journal.

"Nope," Sam answered, elbows propped up on his knees. "Neither has Jefferson or Pastor Jim. What about the journal? Any leads in there?"

"No, same as last time I looked. Nothing I can make out." Dean gave a half-hearted chuckle as he shook his head. "I love the guy, but I swear he writes like freaking Yoda."

"Y'know, maybe we should call the feds. File a missing person's."

"Oh, we've talked about this. Dad'd be pissed if we put the feds on his tail."

"I don't care anymore," Sam retorted as Dean's cell began ringing. Dean closed the journal with a thump and got up to answer it, rummaging through his luggage as he attempted to find it. "After all that happened back in Kansas, I mean . . . he should've been there, Dean. You said so yourself you tried to call him and nothing."

Alex's head shot up, her hands pausing in her task of cleaning the pistol. "Wait, you went -"

"I know," Dean interrupted distractedly. "Where the hell is my cellphone?"

Sam looked astounded at his brother's blase behavior. "Y'know, he could be dead for all we know -"

"Don't say that!" Dean shot up, his face stern. "He's not dead, he's, he's . . ."

"He's what? He's hiding? He's busy?"

"Hold on!" Alex finally shouted as she stood. Sam and Dean both stopped their arguing and looked at her, somewhat annoyed. "You both went back to Kansas?"

The boys gave each other a brief look, the tense silence between them only interrupted by the incessant ringing of the missing cell phone. "Just a job," Dean replied dismissively, returning to his hunt for his phone. "Nothing to worry about."

"Apparently there is from the way you two are arguing about it." Neither of them replied to her question. Annoyed now, she put the pistol and oil cloth down on the table and marched over to the beds. "There's something you two aren't telling me, and whatever it is, I need to know."

"Alex -" Sam began.

"Don't start, Sam! You want me to help you find Dad, you need to tell me what's going on."

The ringing suddenly stopped and the two siblings looked over to find Dean staring at an open cell phone screen. He paused and released a short breath. "I don't believe it," he murmured, half to himself.

"What?" Sam and Alex asked at the same time, then stopped and gave each other a look.

Dean sat down on the bed, still staring at the screen. "It's, uh, a text message." He paused and looked at his siblings. "It's coordinates."

There was a pause as the siblings allowed the news to sink in, then Dean was a blur of motion, striding over to the table where Sam's laptop sat. Without waiting for his brother's permission, he sat down and opened the computer, searching feverishly for the location of the coordinates that were sent. "You think it was Dad texting us?" Alex asked, remembering perfectly well what coordinates meant.

"He's given us coordinates before," Dean replied briefly.

"The man can barely work a toaster, Dean," Sam shot back incredulously.

"Who cares?" Alex answered. "He's alive, we can actually track him down without grasping at straws."

"Yeah, if there was a number on the caller ID," Sam pointed out.

"Which there wasn't," Dean agreed. "It just said 'unknown'."

"Well what about the coordinates?" Alex asked. "Maybe they can point us in the right direction?"

"That's the interesting part," Dean replied. "They point to Rockford, Illinois."

"Okay, and that's interesting how?" Sam asked.

"Well, I checked the local Rockford paper. Take a look at this." Dean turned the computer so his siblings could see the screen. Sam and Alex walked closer. There, in bold typeface, was a headline that read "Local Officer Murder-Suicide". The picture next to the headline showed a young officer with a thin face and a bright smile, the name "Officer Walter Kelly" printed underneath it. Dean clicked on the picture to enlarge it. "This cop, Walter Kelly, comes home from his shift, shoots his wife, then puts the gun in his mouth, blows his brains out. And earlier that night, Kelly and his partner responded to a call at the Roosevelt Asylum."

Sam, who had sat down, looked in confusion at his brother while Alex crossed her arms, staring hard at the picture. "Okay, I'm not following," Sam said, voicing what he and Alex were both thinking. "What does this have to do with us?"

"Dad earmarked the same asylum in the journal," Dean responded impatiently, flipping through the book until he came across an old newspaper clipping. The title of the article jumped out at them: 'Teenagers die in abandoned hospital fire.' "Here," Dean said. "Seven unconfirmed sightings, two deaths - till last week, at least - I think this is where he wants us to go." He looked rather proud of himself.

Sam, on the other hand, had a look of utter disbelief on his face as he stood and rubbed his hands over his hair in a gesture of stress. "This is a job," he said. "Dad wants us to work a job."

"Well, maybe we'll meet up with him. Maybe he's there."

"Maybe he's not. I mean, he could be sending us there, by ourselves, to hunt this thing -"

"Who cares?" Dean shut the journal and closed the laptop with a sense of finality, making Alex jump. Dean paid her no mind as he stood and walked past Sam. "He wants us there, it's good enough for me."

"This doesn't strike you as weird?" Sam asked, pressing the issue. "The texting? The coordinates?"

"Sam! Dad's tellin' us to go somewhere, we're goin'!" Dean finally cast a glance over his shoulder to Alex. "Alex, get packing. We're going to Rockford, Illinois."

Alex looked up at him. "Illinois? Now? You do realize we just got here, right?"

"Doesn't matter. We got a job, we're gonna do it. Now move your ass."

She stared him dead in the eye and then, with a look of defiance, sat down on the chair behind her and crossed her arms. "No."

Dean looked back at her in stunned disbelief. "No?"

"You heard me."

He gave a little scoffing laugh. "Look, I know it's, uh, been a little while, but here's a refresher in case you've forgotten. Around here, when Dad tells us to do something, we do it. Immediately."

"Well, in case _you've_ forgotten, Princess, Illinois is a 12 hour drive from Berwyn. Now, I don't know about you, but I am exhausted from today. And considering that you probably drove up from freaking Kansas right before you found me - which, let me remind you, is another _17 hour drive_ -, you need sleep even more desperately than I do."

Dean spluttered at the use of the demeaning nickname. "We _need_ to do this job or more people are gonna die!"

"Oh don't give me that crap. The job's not going anywhere. And neither are we until we all get some sleep."

"I don't need to bring you along, y'know. I was doin' just fine when it was me and Sam."

"Well then I guess you're just going to have to leave me behind."

Sam watched the scene before him unfold, feeling impressed as his big brother paced the room with his hands running through his hair. In the span of one day, this girl had managed to win not one but two arguments with Dean. He really needed to get some tips from her. Meanwhile, Alex continued to stare Dean down. "Well?" she asked. "Go on if you're going."

Dean remained silent and she took that as a sign (rightly) that she had won. "Well then, since we're not going anywhere tonight, I'll go get us some food. There's a burger joint down the street."

"I'll come with you," Sam volunteered. He really didn't want to be around Dean in the aftermath of that argument. Besides, someone had to remember to bring back pie.

She nodded. "We'll leave first thing in the morning, then." 

The doorknob of the large yellow house began to turn as the lock clicked open. A few moments later, a woman in her late forties pushed it open and turned on the light to the house. She was an attractive woman with dark brown hair falling to her shoulders and a kind, maternal face, the type of face you would expect a mother or an aunt to have. Her dark brown eyes blinked as the light came on, adjusting to the sudden brightness of the room.

Immediately upon entering she could tell something was off. Perhaps it was something in the air. Or perhaps it was the smell of something burning and the sound of the smoke alarm blaring through the entire house. As quickly as she could (she still wasn't sure why secretaries were required to wear heels), she speed-walked to the kitchen and opened the oven, shutting it off and - after grabbing a nearby dish towel - pulling out what had once been a pie. It was charred and black as a coal. Clearly someone had left it in far longer than it should have been.

Placing it on the stove top, she scanned the area as the sense of wrong-ness assailed her again. On the stove top was the French press of black tea she had made this morning. She touched the side of it with her delicate hand. Stone cold. To the left she spied the remains of a shattered mug, the pieces in a neat little pile on the counter top. Nothing else had been moved. It was as if . . .

She paused for a moment. "Alexa?" she called out. Silence. She tried again. Still nothing. Her heels clicked on the hardwood as she made her way towards the stairs and up them, her body moving automatically towards the room right at the top. She peered inside the room. Drawers and closet doors were all opened, the contents in complete disarray. Books and papers were scattered over the desk and floor. And the bed was still as neatly made as it had been when she left for work this morning. As if it hadn't been used at all.

Taking a few moments to collect herself, she walked to the master bedroom and picked up the phone, dialling a number she knew by heart. She listened as the dial tone sounded twice followed by a click as someone picked up. " _Dr. McCabe speaking."_ The voice was cold and professional.

"It's me, Jon," she replied.

" _Elise? What's wrong?"_

"Something happened today. Alexa's gone." 

_Rockford, Illinois_

Alex crossed her arms as she walked into the old asylum, suppressing a shiver that wasn't from the cold. She had never actually worked a case before - the most she ever did with Dad was target practice, monster review, and babysitting duty. Not that she had minded at the time, of course, but it still made her feel woefully underprepared, especially given the way that her brothers naturally took charge of the situation. She had to wonder how many times they had done this before, with or without Dad. Then she promptly pushed the thought out of her head. It wouldn't help to think about that just yet.

"So apparently the cops chased the kids here, into the South Wing." Sam's voice broke through her thoughts. Turning away from the graffitied walls and piles of litter, she found herself staring at an old sign with bold red letters. The sign stood above a door much like the two they had just walked through.

"South Wing, huh? Wait a second . . ." She looked at Dean, who was muttering to himself as he flipped through Dad's journal again, stopping only when he found the newspaper clipping from before. He paused as he glanced through it quickly. "1972. Three kids broke into the South Wing. Only one survived. The way he tells it, one of his friends went nuts and started lighting up the place." Dean looked up at his siblings and Alex felt a tremor of anticipation as she realized what he was saying.

"So whatever's going on, South Wing seems like the heart of it," Sam concluded, echoing Alex's thoughts.

"Yeah but if kids are spelunking the asylum, why aren't there a ton more deaths?"

Alex thought for a moment. Dean was right, it didn't make sense. That is, until she caught sight of something hanging limply from the door handles. It was a long chain with thick iron links. She walked a little closer and examined it carefully - a padlock still held two ends of the chain together, but one of the links looked like it had been cut. "Hey, look at this," Alex said, drawing their attention to the broken chain and padlock. "This chain looks like it's been here for years. Maybe they're usually chained shut and one of the kids brought something to cut it."

Sam and Dean edged closer to the door and saw that she was right. "Could be, yeah," Dean agreed with her. "Maybe it was to keep people out. Or to keep something in."

All three shared an uncomfortable look as Sam pushed the door. It opened with a creak. As they stood there staring through the entryway, Alex realized with a jolt that they would have to go in there. Into the place where many people had died. Where supposedly people were going insane. She gulped silently as Sam and Dean led the way into the old corridors, following along quietly behind them. She didn't want to admit it, especially not to De, but she was terrified. Every time the moldy walls ended in an intersection, she half-expected a monster to jump out at her. Trying to keep her imagination at bay, she focused on Sam and Dean's banter as they examined the halls like experts.

"Let me know if you see any dead people, Haley Joel," Dean said nonchalantly, gazing at something in his hand that emitted a buzzing sound. She thought she recognized it as an EMF meter (she remembered it from the countless hours Dad had made her spend analyzing supernatural weapons and tech), but she was more interested in the topic that Dean had brought up. The boys had refused to tell her anything about what had happened before they found her, and quite frankly, she was getting tired of it. If she had to eavesdrop to figure out what was going on, then so be it.

Whatever it was, it seemed to be a touchy subject, as Sam almost immediately shot back a "Dude, enough."

He chuckled. "No, I'm serious, you gotta be careful, alright? Ghosts are attracted to that whole ESP thing you got goin' on there."

"I already told you, it's not ESP, I just have . . . strange vibes sometimes, weird dreams."

"Yeah, whatever. Don't ask don't tell."

Sam sighed in frustration. "Are you getting any reading on that thing or not?"

"Nope." He then lifted his head to call back to Alex, lifting the object he was holding. "Hey Lix, pop quiz. What's this and what is it used for?"

"It's an EMF meter, right?" she answered. "Used to read electromagnetic frequencies, helpful in seeing if there are spirits around. Although why that one looks like a walkman met an untimely end is beyond me."

Dean shook his head. "Yeah, real funny. 'Course, just because nothing's coming up doesn't mean nobody's home."

"Spirits can appear during certain hours of the day," Sam agreed.

"So maybe we should try coming back later on, say, at night?" Alex asked.

"Exactly."

"Hey Sam," Dean interjected, "who do you think's a hotter psychic - Patricia Arquette, Jennifer Love Hewitt, or you?"

There was a moment of silence as the question was considered, followed by a sharp _smack_ as Sam hit Dean's shoulder. Dean, of course, didn't seem to mind, laughing like the obnoxious big brother that he was. Alex rolled her eyes at their bickering but tried to keep her temper in check. She was under enough stress as it was and she could sense that they were, too; blowing up at them for something so small wouldn't help matters any.

That still didn't lessen her desire to whack Dean upside the head.

The trio continued on down the corridor until they reached an examination room of some sorts. Sam immediately started coughing as they entered the room. Alex nearly threw up. The entire place stank of rot and decay, and it was nothing short of suffocating. The scenery around them didn't help - torn screens, old medical equipment, a few metal chairs with restraints, dismembered body parts preserved in dusty jars, and a headless baby doll, all of them adding to the creepy, abandoned feeling. Dean whistled once, then started walking into the room. The EMF meter remained stubbornly silent. Seeing as it was of no help, he put it away in his inner jacket pocket and started looking around the room. Taking this as their cue, Sam and Alex followed suit.

"Man," Dean said at last, breaking the eerie quiet. "Electroshock, lobotomies, they did some twisted stuff to these people. Kinda like my man Jack in Cuckoo's Nest." He waited to see if what he said would garner any reaction from his siblings, turning away awkwardly when he received none. "So what do you think? Ghosts are possessing people?"

"Maybe," Sam finally answered, thinking through it. "Or maybe it's more like, uh, like Amityville or the Smurl haunting."

"So spirits driving them insane," Alex summarized, trying to keep up.

"Kinda like my man Jack in the Shining," Dean interjected again with another cocky grin. Alex rolled her eyes again and continued searching.

Silence prevailed again for another few moments before Sam sighed. "Dean," he said, waiting until his brother turned to face him. "When are we gonna talk about it?"

"Talk about what?" Dean asked, feigning innocence.

"About the fact that Dad's not here."

Alex remained silent, still listening as she continued to examine the room. Something that Sam had said when they found her was bugging her - that he understood her feeling that Dad had abandoned her. And he'd also mentioned how Dean had found him, as if he hadn't been with Dean and Dad all this time. Maybe Dad had left him too? Or maybe he'd left of his own accord. Either way, all she felt coming from Sam was contempt towards their father and it left a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.

"Oh," Dean said as if realizing what his brother had meant. "Uh, let's see, never."

"I'm being serious, man."

"So am I, Sam. Look, he sent us here, he obviously wants us here. We'll just have to pick up the search later."

"It doesn't matter what he wants."

"See, that attitude right there? That is why I always get the extra cookie."

"Dad could be in trouble. We should be looking for _him_. We deserve some answers -" Sam paused before continuing in a softer voice - " _Alex_ deserves some answers. I mean, this is our _family_ we're talking about -"

"I understand that, Sam," Dean interrupted, "but he's given us an order."

"So what, we gotta always follow Dad's orders?"

"Of course we do."

Once again there was nothing but silence. Alex took a deep breath and continued to search, her eyes landing on a large rectangular shape on one of the tables. Picking it up, she turned it over and examined it. It was a sign, the words reading "CHIEF OF STAFF SANFORD ELLICOTT, M.D." _Chief of Staff, huh?_ she thought to herself. She turned to face her brothers. "Hey," she said.

She waited until she had their full attention and waggled the sign in the air with one hand. "Y'know, instead of wasting time arguing, maybe we should check out what actually happened in the South Wing. Might get a good lead." She practically shoved the sign into Dean's chest, walking towards the exit as he and Sam examined it for themselves. By the time they had finished reading the words, she was already at the doorway, waiting impatiently for them. "Well? Come on! We're wasting daylight!" 

Dean sighed as he leaned against the glass door of the building, his impatience and boredom rising steadily by the minute. Sam had gone in to talk to the therapist - Dr. James Ellicott, Sanford Ellicott's son - about the hospital ages ago. What the hell could be taking him so long?

"Patience is considered a virtue, y'know."

He glanced over to see Alex, arms crossed in front of her, studying him with a half-grin on her face. Shrugging half-heartedly, he looked away towards the parking lot in front of them. "What can I say? I'm not exactly a virtuous person."

"Mmm."

Without another word, she shoved her hands in her jacket pockets and turned away from him. He blew out a long breath and hung his head. In the months and years following _the incident_ , he'd had dreams of hunting with Alex, having her back in his life. It had been all he wanted. Now she was here and it was just . . . strange. Something about her had changed over the past eighteen years, and not just her appearance. No, it was something deeper than that. Whatever happened during that time had affected her in ways that he wasn't even sure he fully understood.

"Hey De?"

Her voice broke the silence again and he looked up to acknowledge her. "Yeah?"

She shifted uncomfortably, her eyes dropping to the ground before jumping back up to meet his again. "Look, I'm - I'm sorry."

"About what?"

"Acting like a stubborn bitch. You and Sam were just trying to find me and I made it harder for you."

He managed to hide his look of surprise. This was new. Alex never used to apologize after being stubborn - something she picked up from him, no doubt. "Don't worry about it. You're pissed at Dad for abandoning you, nothing wrong with that."

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean I should take it out on you."

He gave a short chuckle. "Since when did you get so soft?"

She paused then shook her head with a soft laugh, walking over to join him up against the glass door. "Guess that's what happens when you spend enough time with a normal family."

"Ugh, _normal_." He spat the word like a curse. "I'll take our messed-up family over _normal_ any day."

"You wouldn't know normal if it bit you on the leg."

They both gave a small laugh and he felt a rush of warmth. Despite the strange circumstances, it was good to have her back. She looked over at him again. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"Why'd you go back? To Kansas. We swore we would never go back there, ever."

He fell silent. For a moment, he considered lying. Then he immediately tossed that thought out the window. Of all the people he had lied to in his life, he couldn't lie to her. Even if he wanted to, she'd see through it instantly. Swallowing, he leaned his head back against the glass. "I didn't want to. But there were people in our old house who were gonna die if we didn't. Poltergeist hangin' out around the place."

"Does this have something to do with what you and Sam were talking about? The ESP thing?"

He shifted his weight uncomfortably, drawing out the silence. ". . . Yeah. Yeah, it does. Sam, he, uh . . . he saw them getting hurt before it happened. I didn't believe it at first. But then we found the people in his . . . weirdo dream-thing and . . ." He trailed off, not sure what else to say. Thankfully Alex fell silent again, as if sensing that he didn't want to talk anymore, which he was grateful for.

At that moment, he heard the door swing open and Sam walked through the door at a brisk pace. Grateful for the distraction, Dean pushed himself off the glass and followed after, Alex right on his heels. "Dude, you were in there forever! What the hell were you talkin' about?"

Sam glanced back but kept walking. "Just the hospital, y'know?"

"And?"

"And the South Wing? It's where they housed the _real_ hard cases - the psychotics, the criminally insane -"

"Sounds lovely," Alex interjected, struggling to keep up with her brothers' long strides.

"Yeah, and one night in '64, they rioted. Attacked staff, attacked each other."

"So what, the patients took over the asylum?" Dean asked.

"Apparently."

"Any deaths?"

"Some patients, some staff. Guess it was pretty gory, some of the bodies were never even recovered, including our chief of staff Ellicott."

"Never recovered?" Alex asked.

"Cops scoured every inch of the place," Sam explained, "but I guess the patients must have . . . stuffed the bodies somewhere hidden."

Alex paled slightly at the thought, but Dean seemed unaffected. "That's grim," he commented.

"Yeah," Sam agreed. "So they transferred all the surviving patients and shut down the hospital for good."

"Alright, so to sum it up, we got a bunch of violent deaths and a bunch of unrecovered bodies."

"Which could mean a bunch of angry spirits."

Alex looked at them like they were insane. "And we're going back there tonight? When said angry spirits will most likely be roaming the place?"

"Welcome back to the business," Dean responded with a smirk. "Alright, let's check out the hospital tonight."


	5. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4: The Freaks Come Out At Night**

" _. . . anything's possible if you've got enough nerve." -_ The Half-Blood Prince

Kat sat in the corner of the dark room, hunched over and facing the moldy wall. Her heart pounded furiously in her chest as tears ran down her face. She tried desperately to stay silent. She couldn't let those . . . those _things_ know where she was. Struggling to keep herself from hyperventilating, she fought to direct her thoughts somewhere, anywhere, else. Why had she let Gavin talk her into coming here?

Gavin . . .

Instead of making things better, thinking of her boyfriend just made things so much worse. She'd heard him scream a while ago - she didn't know how long it had been, but it had felt like an eternity - after he'd gone off on his own to go exploring deeper in the asylum. He could be hurt, dead for all she knew. One of those things could have gotten him and she would never know.

Should she try to leave? Go find help? That would be the most reasonable thing to do. But she couldn't leave. Those things might come after her if she moved. Besides, she wasn't going anywhere without Gavin. She had to know if he was okay.

Suddenly her body tensed as her ears registered a sound beyond the rushing of blood through her head. Voices. Human voices. Coming this way. She strained to listen. It was a guy speaking, but it wasn't Gavin. Were there other people here? She tried to turn to listen but accidentally hit the bed she was hiding behind with her arm. The voices abruptly stopped and she froze, hardly daring to breathe. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Maybe they weren't human but instead one of the things roaming the hall. What was she going to do? Okay, maybe if she stayed absolutely still they would just pass by her without noticing her. Footsteps sounded through the room, but maybe they were just continuing down the hall? Oh God. Oh God.

With a shriek of metal against concrete she heard and felt the bed get pulled out of the way and she screamed. Her fight or flight instincts kicked in as she whipped around to see who or what had found her, backing up against the wall. Instantly she was blinded by a bright light and she blinked, squinting against the glare. _A flashlight,_ her mind registered as she gasped for breath. There was a flashlight being shined directly in her face. Behind the bright light were three people. Two men and one woman. One of the men was a literal giant with longish brown curls - he was the one with the flashlight. The other man had shorter spiked brown hair and was pointing a sawed-off shotgun directly at her. The woman, far shorter than the two gargantuan men next to her, had long dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. All three of them wore run-down clothes and had an identical look of surprise on their faces, as if she was the last person they expected to find here.

They stared at her for a few moments, then the two men lowered their respective objects. "It's alright, we're not gonna hurt you," the shorter of the men said. "It's okay. What's your name?"

She started to get to her feet, making the split-second decision to trust them. They seemed human enough to her, and she was glad to not be alone by herself anymore. "Katherine," she said, her voice a little breathier than she would have liked. Gathering her wits a bit more, she stood up the rest of the way. "Kat," she clarified, in a stronger voice than before.

"Okay," the man replied. "I'm Dean, this is Sam and that's Alex." He pointed to the taller man first and the woman second.

"What are you doing here?" the taller man - the one she guessed was named Sam - asked incredulously.

She tried to take a few deep breaths to steady herself and ended up hyperventilating again. "Um - my boyfriend, Gavin -"

"Is he here?" Dean asked.

She nodded shakily. ". . . Somewhere." The trio exchanged a strange sort of glance, which Kat took as a sign to continue her explanation. Gasps punctuated her sentences at random intervals. "He thought it would be fun and try and see some ghosts. I thought it was all just . . . y'know, pretend." She tried not to start sobbing again as she pulled her sweater closer around herself. "I've seen things. I heard Gavin scream and -"

"Alright, Kat, come on," Dean said, taking her gently by the arm and leading her towards the doorway. "Sam and Alex are gonna get you out of here, then we're gonna find your boyfriend."

As soon as the words left his mouth something inside her kicked in. "No! No! I'm not gonna leave without Gavin! I'm coming with you." She couldn't believe she was saying it, but she knew she would never be able to forgive herself if she didn't stay and look for him.

Dean seemed exasperated with her. "It's no joke around here, okay? It's dangerous."

"That's why I've gotta find him," she explained, calmer now.

Silence fell for a few moments as the trio shared another look. If she didn't know any better, she would have believed they were communicating telepathically. Before she could examine it any further, however, Dean faced her again. "Alright, I guess we're gonna split up, then. Alex, you're with me."

Alex shot him an incredulous glance. "And leave Sam alone?"

"Sam can handle himself, alright? I want you with me so I can keep an eye on you."

Alex opened her mouth to argue again but Sam quickly cut her off. "It's fine, Alex, really. Go on, I'll be okay."

Seeing that she was outnumbered, Alex heaved a long sigh of resignation. It was strange the way they acted around each other, as if Alex was some sort of apprentice and Dean and Sam were her mentors. Dean nodded once and faced Kat again. "Let's go." And without further ado, he began leading the way out into the corridors.

Kat stuck as close as she could to the other two as they walked down the long, dark hallways. Thankfully there were no signs of the things from earlier. She called out for Gavin as often as she could while Dean shone a flashlight in every corner. They were almost past a long row of moldy windows when Dean stopped and turned to face her. "Hey, I got a question for ya. You've seen a lot of horror movies, yeah?"

"I guess so," she answered uncertainly.

"Do me a favor. Next time you see one? Pay attention. When someone says a place is haunted, don't go in." And with that he turned and started walking forward again.

She glanced back only to find Alex shaking her head. "You can ignore him, he doesn't do well with the whole touchy-feely emotional thing," Alex said, walking next to her.

"I'm being serious here," Dean called back over his shoulder.

"So am I. You're really crappy at dealing with people."

Kat giggled a bit but tried to hide it behind one of her hands. Alex still seemed to see, though, since she gave Kat a grin and continued pushing forward.

The trio moved further and further down the hallway. Alex had taken to making small talk with Kat - mundane things like where she was going to school and what she liked doing -, something she greatly appreciated. She knew Alex was trying to take away the stress of the situation and get her mind off her missing boyfriend. She was grateful for that; she didn't know how much longer she would last if she kept imagining finding Gavin's dead body around one of the corners.

Suddenly Dean's flashlight began to flicker and he shook it as it went out completely. "You son of a bitch," he muttered furiously under his breath, putting the now useless flashlight in the duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He reached into his pocket. "It's alright, I got a lighter," he reassured them. Within a few seconds a tiny flame flared to life in his hand, illuminating some of the darkness.

Kat shifted uncomfortably. "Ow! Alex, you're hurting my arm!" she whispered.

"But I'm not touching you," Alex said.

Dean turned around, moving the lighter to show that neither of Alex's hands were anywhere near Kat. Her heart rising in her throat, Kat looked down at her arm. There was a hand - filthy, blackened by dirt and other grime - gripping her tightly.

All at once something strong pulled her into an empty with a loud scream, the door slamming shut behind her. "Kat!" Dean and Alex both shouted, their footsteps pounding against the floor.

Kat was well and truly panicking now. She slammed against the door with her fist repeatedly, trying her best to break it down despite knowing it was physically impossible. "Let me out!" she shrieked in terror. "Please! Please!" Outside, she could hear Dean straining like he was trying to pull the door open. Nothing. It wasn't even budging.

"Hang on, Kat, we're gonna get you out of there! Just stay calm, okay?" There was an edge to Alex's voice as she shouted through the door and Kat backed up a few paces towards the center of the room. Suddenly feeling as though something were behind her, she spun around, only to be greeted with an empty room.

Outside, Dean was hammering on the door with something, trying to physically bust it open but to no avail. She wished they would hurry up. Why couldn't they hurry it up? Then she felt it again - the sensation that there was something right behind her. Slowly, hesitantly, she turned her head, and shrieked in horror again. There, in front of her, was a horribly disfigured man in grimy clothing. She backed away as quickly as she could, only to hear a sound like someone drawing in a ragged breath right behind her. She spun around once more, shrieking again when she saw it was the same disfigured man.

She pushed herself as far away from him as she could, pressing up against the door and making sure to keep an eye on him at all times. She heard Sam shout something unintelligible from her end and footsteps running towards her. Dean paused from his hammering and shouted what sounded like "She's inside with one of them!" to Sam.

"HELP ME!" she screamed. The man was moving closer to her.

"KAT!" There was Gavin's voice now. He was alright!

"GET ME OUT OF HERE!" she yelled. The man just wouldn't stop coming.

"Kat, it's not gonna hurt you!" That was Sam's voice. She didn't care what he said. She ran as far away from the man as she could, sobbing as she rushed to another wall. "Listen to me, you have to face it! You have to calm down!"

"She's gotta _what_?!" Dean and Alex asked in unison.

"I have to _what_?!" she repeated.

Sam continued on. "These spirits, they're not trying to hurt us, they're trying to communicate! You gotta listen to it, you gotta face it!"

"You face it!"

"No, it's the only way you're gonna get outta there!"

"No!"

"Look at it, that's all!" Sam's voice was pleading now. "Come on, you can do it!"

Kat found herself hyperventilating again, but she tried her best to do as Sam said. She wanted to get out of there. She _had_ to get out of there. Swallowing her fear, she turned slowly to face the man in front of her. He was absolutely hideous. His long black hair was matted and tangled. One eye was completely swollen shut, the other covered by his hair. His clothes were torn and dirty and he looked as if he hadn't bathed in a long time. His breathing was loud and labored. But true to Sam's word, he didn't seem to want to hurt her. He was no longer moving closer to her, but instead just standing there, staring at her. As she allowed herself to look at him directly, he began to slowly move his mouth closer to her ear.

After what felt like an eternity, the lock clicked and the door swung slowly open. Kat stood there, looking up at them. There was Gavin in between Sam, Dean, and Alex. He seemed to be alright except for the gash on his forehead. "Oh Kat," he sighed in relief. Immediately, Dean pulled her out of the room as Sam and Alex moved forward to examine it. She waited by Gavin, not willing to speak until they were all out of there.

"137," she said. Her own voice sounded tired and weak to her ears.

The trio looked at her, confused. "What?" Alex asked.

She took a deep breath. "It whispered in my ear. 137."

Sam and Dean looked at each other. "Room number," they realized in unison.

Kat didn't know what exactly they were talking about, but she didn't care anymore. She just wanted to leave. She waited patiently, trying to gather her wits back while Sam and Dean had a small conference - something about what the spirits were "really trying to do." Alex stood there awkwardly, trying hard to be included but failing. For some reason, Kat found herself thinking, she looked really out of place. Why was that? They arrived here together, shouldn't they be working together doing . . . whatever it was they were doing? Before she could answer her own question, Sam and Dean stood up again. "So," Dean said, "now, you guys ready to leave this place?"

"That's an understatement," Kat replied with a long sigh.

"Alright." Dean turned to the other two. "Sam, Alex, you two get 'em outta here. I'm gonna go find room 137." Pulling out a flashlight, he clicked it on and started off down the hall again back in the direction they'd originally been heading. As soon as he left, Sam and Alex began leading Kat and Gavin down the opposite way, which she assumed was the way out.

Kat thought hard to herself. Before, Dean had said something about wanting to keep Alex close to him so he could keep an eye on her. But before that, he had wanted Alex to go with Sam to get Kat out of there. And now he was sending Alex with Sam again. It was almost like he was trying to keep Alex out of harm's way. Why? And why the hell did they know all this stuff about ghosts and spirits? It didn't make sense. After a few more moments of silence, she decided to ask. "So how do you guys know about all this ghost stuff?"

It was Sam who answered this time. "It's kind of our job." Alex remained stubbornly silent, something Kat found interesting. The young woman had been so willing to talk to her earlier, and now she was abnormally silent.

"Why would anyone want a job like that?" Kat asked.

Sam huffed a laugh. "I had a crappy guidance counselor."

"And Dean . . . he's your boss?"

Alex snorted, finally making some sort of noise. "Not exactly," she answered, clearly trying to hold back laughter. Though why that was so funny went right over Kat's head. Dean was clearly the leader, taking charge in all the situations, so it would make sense if Sam was the employee and Alex was some sort of intern. But if they weren't boss and employee, what sort of relationship did they all share?

As she struggled to wrack her brain, she saw that they were heading towards a large hospital door. That was where they had come in, Kat was sure of it. They were almost there! At least, that's what she thought until Sam tried to pull it open. When that didn't work, he banged on another set of doors to their left. Nothing. Both stayed stubbornly shut, like someone had locked it. He turned back to them. "Alright. I think we have a small problem."

"Let's break it down," Gavin spoke up, trying to take charge of the situation. Like always.

"I don't think that's gonna work," Sam replied, exasperation showing in his tone.

"Then a window!" Gavin suggested again.

"They're barred," Kat pointed out. He knew that.

"Well then how are we supposed to get out?!"

"I think that's the point," Alex said. Her face took on a somber expression. "We're not. There's something in here that doesn't want us to leave."

Kat thought about it. "Those patients -"

"Not them. Something else."

Alex looked up from her post on the wall as Sam came striding back towards the group. "Alright, I looked everywhere. There's no other way out."

"So what the hell are we gonna do?" Gavin asked.

"Well, for starters, we're not gonna panic."

"Why the hell not?!"

As Sam's phone began to ring, she found herself actually feeling a bit sorry for Gavin. The guy had absolutely no spine. Despite how much he tried to hide it and be 'big man on campus,' it was clear he wasn't cut out for this sort of thing. Her pitying thoughts about Gavin were cut short when Sam answered the phone.

There was some sort of weird high-pitched static that immediately caught Alex's attention. Dean's voice sounded like it was having a hard time getting through. " _Sam, it's me. I see him. He's comin' at me."_

"Where are you?" Sam asked.

" _I'm in the basement. Hurry up!"_

"I'm on my way." He closed the phone, then handed Alex a black shotgun. "Alex, you remember how to handle a shotgun?"

"Yeah, of course I do," she answered. She hadn't forgotten _everything_ about hunting.

"Alright, take this. It's loaded with rock salt. Now, it might not kill a spirit, but it'll repel it, so if you see something, shoot. I'm going after Dean."

"Wait, alone? Are you nuts?"

"Look, Alex, I don't have time for this. I gotta help him."

She glanced back at Kat and Gavin, who were standing off together, then focused her attention back on Sam. "He's my brother, too, y'know," she hissed under her breath. "If anything happens to either of you -"

"I understand that," Sam interrupted softly, "but I need you to stay with these people and keep them safe. You may have never actually hunted before, but you have training, which is way more than they have. Please."

She glared at him for a few moments as he gazed back at her, giving her puppy-dog eyes. Damn, she had forgotten about those. When did he get so good? He used to be terrible at them. Finally, she relented. "Okay. But you'd better come back."

"I will," he promised. Then he was off down the hallway again, searching for Dean.

She sighed, then loaded the shotgun. She hated waiting. It made her feel completely useless. Then again, she'd been feeling useless this entire time, so this really wasn't much different.

They waited. And waited. It seemed like an eternity. Alex was almost growling with impatience as she paced back and forth. A bad feeling was bubbling in the pit of her stomach, telling her something was about to go horribly, horribly wrong. She glanced back at Gavin and Kat. At least they seemed to be doing okay. That was something. As long as they were alright then that was one less thing for Alex to worry about.

"Hey Gavin?" Kat finally said with a sigh from where she crouched against the wall.

Gavin walked over and crouched beside her. "Yeah?"

"If we make it out of here alive . . ." She looked over at him. ". . . we are so breaking up."

Had they had a few more moments of quiet, Alex would have burst out laughing. She liked Kat. She was strong, unlike her boyfriend. She definitely deserved better than him. It was at that moment, though, that she heard something move further down the hallway. Alex's head shot up at the noise just in time to see a shadow moving along the wall. "Get behind me," she warned, raising the shotgun. Her heart pounded as she tried to remember what Dad had taught her: butt tight against the shoulder, hold the barrel with the left hand, lead the target, squeeze the trigger. The figure rounded the corner and Alex instinctively took her shot, missing it by a few inches as it ducked back around the corner.

She heard something that sounded like a curse, followed by a gravelly voice. "Don't shoot, it's me!"

Her heart leapt up to her throat as she instantly realized the figure hadn't been a spirit. Oops. "Sorry!" she called back.

A few seconds later, Dean popped back out from around the corner, taking a few moments to examine where she'd hit. It looked like she had managed to get the wall. Had Dean continued forward, she would have hit him right in the face. Great. Her first time working a job and she almost shot her own brother. He walked over to them. "What are you still doin' here?" he asked. "Where's Sam?"

"What do you mean? Isn't he with you?" Alex asked.

"I sent him back with you."

"He went to the basement, you called him!" Gavin explained.

Dean gave them all a look. "I didn't call him."

"His cell phone rang," Kat added. "He said it was you."

Alex's heart skipped a beat. If Dean didn't call him, then . . . oh no. Oh no. Dean seemed to come to the same realization. "The basement, huh?" Gavin nodded. Dean paused for a few seconds, then grabbed a gun and stuffed it in his inside coat pocket. "Alright, Alex, watch 'em. And watch out for me." He started to stalk off back the way he had come.

"Wha - Dean! Dean, wait!" Alex called, racing after him.

"I'm serious, Alex, stay with them," Dean called back over his shoulder.

"I'm not letting you go down there alone!" Grabbing his arm, she yanked him backwards so he was facing her. "Listen to me - something lured Sam down there. He might be in real trouble, and if he is and you go down to rescue him alone, you could get hurt too -"

"I hear what you're sayin', but I've been in this rodeo a lot longer than you have. Besides, if you're right and whatever's down there does get me, then who's gonna protect those people?"

She stared at him incredulously. "So what, you expect me to just sit on the side lines?"

"I expect you to protect Kat and Gavin, alright? You're the last line of defense here. So stay outta trouble and keep an eye on them. I'll be back soon." Without waiting for her response, he broke into a brisk walk towards the basement area.

"Dean!" No reply. He was long gone. She cursed under her breath, tugging at her ponytail in frustration. Now what was she supposed to do? She knew Dean needed her. He wouldn't be able to take on whatever was waiting for him alone. She couldn't explain it, but she could feel that something was going to happen to him if she didn't go after him. She kicked at the floor and stalked back towards where Kat and Gavin stood, sliding down the wall. Stupid, stupid, STUPID! Why was he so freaking stubborn?

"Hey, you okay?"

She looked up to see Kat standing over her, a concerned look on her face that bordered between worry and pity. Alex released the breath she had been holding in with a sigh. "Yeah, I'm fine."

Kat took a seat next to her against the wall, smoothing her sweater underneath her. "I never did get a chance to thank you," she said after a few moments of silence. "Not just, y'know, for saving me, but for earlier, with the small talk. It helped a lot and I just wanted to say thanks."

Alex gave her a small smile. "It's the least I could do. Though you should probably wait until we get out of this place, see if you still want to thank me then."

Silence prevailed for a few more moments before Kat gathered the courage to speak again. "So, Sam and Dean . . . do they always do this to you? Make you stay behind?"

"Hmm . . ." Alex thought to herself for a moment. How in the world could she even go about answering that? She'd watched Sam take the lead when Kat was questioning him before and noticed he tried to skate around the topic with lame jokes and sarcasm. It didn't take a genius to figure out there was some sort of unspoken rule about giving as little information as possible about their actual lives, specifically hunting. Bearing this in mind, she tried to phrase her answer as diplomatically as possible. "Well, I'm still kinda new to this whole gig. My guess is Dean and Sam both want to protect me as much as possible." She thought about the implications for the second part of that sentence. Sam being protective over her . . . if that wasn't a strange thought she didn't know what was.

Her mind was distracted as Kat started talking again. "Still, that's not fair for them to sideline you like that. Especially when it's clear you're worried about them."

Alex huffed. "You don't have to tell me twice."

There were a few moments of silence before Kat spoke again. "So Sam and Dean are your brothers?"

"Yeah," Alex replied. No use hiding it now; she hadn't exactly kept it a secret, after all. "Sam's the youngest and Dean's the oldest. I'm right in the middle."

Kat nodded, her mouth making an "o" shape. "That makes a lot more sense than boss and employee."

Alex actually chuckled at that. Again, she found herself thinking about how much she liked Kat. That thought was interrupted by the sound of a sawed-off shotgun echoing through the building. Again, she was assailed with the feeling that something was horribly, horribly wrong, and she had a clear image of Sam in her head, standing over Dean with a gun and a bloody nose. She jumped to her feet.

"What is it?" Kat asked, worried by her sudden movement.

"It's the boys. They're in trouble, I know it." She paused, weighing her options. She knew these two needed to be protected, but there was only one spirit in here that wanted to hurt them, and she had a feeling it was down in the basement with her brothers. She had no choice. The boys needed her more, she had to go help. Her mind made up, she turned back to the couple. "Alright, can either of you use a shotgun?"

"What? No!" Gavin replied, horrified by the very thought.

"I can," Kat answered. Gavin looked over at her in surprise. "My dad took me skeet shooting a couple times," she defended herself.

Alex gave her the shotgun and searched the ground for a bit. If she was going to go down there, she needed a weapon to ward off the big baddie that was stalking her brothers. She settled for an iron rod that was lying in one of the piles barricading the door - she didn't know where it had come from, but she wasn't complaining. "Alright. Stay here, and if you see something, shoot. I'm going after them."

Kat just nodded while Gavin looked visibly panicked. "Didn't both Sam _and_ Dean tell you to stay here?" he asked.

"Those two idiots are in way over their heads," she said. "I have to go after them."

"Go get 'em," Kat replied, a hard glint in her kind eyes. "We'll be fine." Gavin glanced back at her in shock, as if he couldn't believe she would say such a thing.

Alex nodded her thanks, then turned and began jogging off to the basement. Her heart raced in her chest, her mind constantly bombarding her with images and scenarios. _What if they were dead? What if the thing that had been making people insane had turned one of them? What if the one of them was dead by the other's hand?_ She kept getting flashes of images in her head - Sam standing over Dean with a gun, Dean gazing up helplessly as Sam prepared to finish him off, an old man with white stringy hair and a deformed face shooting electricity from his fingers. _Stop it!_ she told herself sternly. That kind of thinking wasn't going to get her anywhere. She had to find them, as quickly as possible.

The corridors blurred together as she raced through them, finding a staircase to the basement with relative ease. Holding her rod like a baseball bat, she walked carefully but quickly, scanning the surrounding area for anything that might want to kill her. So far there was nothing, but all the same, something didn't _feel_ right. She felt cold and sick to her stomach and her hairs on the back of her neck prickled. This was much different than her encounter with the spirits of the patients. There was something sinister here, something malevolent.

She was just nearing the open door at the end of the hall when the sound of squeaky wheels rolling and large objects crashing made her rush forward through one room and into the next. A strangled scream reached her ears just as she entered the room. There, in the corner next to an opened cabinet, was Dean. Above him was an old man with a cloud of stringy white hair clinging to his head, his bony fingers surrounded by a blue glow and pressed against Dean's temples and cheeks. He was saying something to Dean in a smooth, relaxing tone, but she couldn't make out what was being said over the sound of her own heart pounding in her ears. All she knew was that Dean was being electrocuted, and if she didn't do something, he was going to die.

Thinking quickly, she glanced around the room and found a sawed-off shotgun lying on the dirty floor. She traded it in for her iron rod and readied it, taking her aim. "Hey ugly!" she shouted, drawing his attention. He looked up at her, annoyed, just as she shot him in the face with rock salt, causing him to disappear in a puff of smoke.

Dean lifted his head and looked up at her, groggy. "Alex . . . ?"

"Don't just sit there, idiot, get rid of him!" she yelled, scanning the room for any sign of the bony bastard who had tried to kill her brothers. Something slammed into her midriff and shoved her backwards with a scream, causing her to hit a wall hard and fall to the ground. She tried to get up when suddenly the spirit was above her, his cracked lips curled in a snarl. One of his eyes had been gouged out, his skin powdery white and flaking away in places. His other eye was yellow and glared at her in hatred as he reached for her -

 _FWOOOOOSH!_

The spirit looked over to the cabinet Dean had been lying next to. Orange and yellow flames engulfed what looked to be a decaying corpse in a lab coat, making a crackling noise. The spirit gazed at his own hands in horror and stood, and as she watched, he began to dissolve in front of her, his skin melting and petrifying until he fell forward onto the ground, shattering. Alex breathed a sigh of relief, letting her head fall back against the ground with a dull thud and squeezing her eyes shut. It was over. The bad feeling in her stomach eased and she felt she could relax again.

As she attempted to keep her head from splitting in half from a headache, she heard Dean pull himself to his feet and stumble towards her. "Alex?" he called, his voice thick and strange.

"I'm alright," she replied. "Head's killing me, but I'm alright."

She opened her eyes again and looked over at him. He was leaning heavily against the wall, head turned towards Sam who was just waking up. "You're not gonna try and kill me, are ya?" he asked their younger brother.

Sam paused, half of his lip scrunched up as he stretched his jaw. He must have gotten clocked pretty good. A thick line of drying blood trailed from one nostril down over his lip. "No," he said finally, going back to stretching his jaw.

Dean nodded. "Good," he said. "'Cause that would be awkward." He then looked over at Alex again, limping over towards her as she started to sit up. He reached out a hand and she gratefully accepted it, using it to pull herself up. He then did something that she wasn't expecting - he hugged her, tightly. Surprised, she simply wrapped her arms around him loosely and patted him on the back.

"I'm alright, Dean," she protested slightly. "I'm okay."

He finally pulled back and looked at her, his expression grave and serious. "Don't you ever do that again. Y'hear me?" Unsure of what else to do, she just nodded. "Good. Let's go get the lovebirds outta here."

The gray morning light was a welcome relief as they stood outside the sanitarium, the cool air fresh and clean against their faces. Kat and Gavin stood awkwardly next to each other in front of the Winchesters, both exhausted but clearly happy to be out and alive. "Thanks, guys," Kat said.

Gavin nodded and echoed her with a "Yeah, thanks."

"No more haunted asylums, okay?" Dean reprimanded, giving them a stern look. The two simply returned the look before turning and going back to the car, Gavin moving his hand up to cup Kat's shoulder. Kat turned back for a brief moment and glanced at Alex, who gave the young woman a friendly smile and a hand raise, then got into the car with Gavin.

Alex sighed as the siblings looked away from the car, Dean lowering the duffel bag they'd brought with them into the Impala. Sam turned back towards the sanitarium briefly, then looked over at Dean. "Hey Dean?" he started, waiting until Dean looked back at him. "I'm sorry, man. I . . . I said some awful things back there."

"You remember all that," Dean stated in surprise.

Sam nodded. "Yeah. It's like I couldn't control it, but I didn't mean it. Any of it."

Alex averted her gaze from the two, continuing to carefully monitor them. She got the sense that there was a lot not being said in this conversation, but she knew prying wouldn't help matters any. If she wanted to know more, she would have to wait until one of them came forward and told her. Meanwhile, Dean continued to give Sam an odd look. "You didn't, huh?"

Sam's eyes twitched in surprise. "No, of course not." Dean didn't respond, simply nodding as if he wasn't convinced. "Do we need to talk about this?"

"No," Dean replied, tossing the bag into the back. "I'm not really in the 'sharing and caring' kind of mood. I just wanna get some sleep." He got into the car and looked back at Alex expectantly. "You coming or what?"

The drive back to the motel was long, silent, and tense. No one said anything, even after the three arrived in the room. They were all too exhausted to continue any sort of conversation. Alex wanted to ask more, but the couch looked so inviting that as soon as she kicked off her shoes she was lying down, fast asleep. It only seemed like moments later, though, when a ringing cell phone brought her back to consciousness.

"Dean," came Sam's groggy voice from across the room, but no response. The phone rang again. Alex rolled over and blinked one eye open just in time to see Sam reach over and grab the phone, glancing at the caller ID. A third ring. Sam flipped open the phone and held it up to his ear. "Hello?" There was a brief pause as Sam sat bolt upright. ". . . Dad?"


	6. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5: Dissent in the Ranks**

" _Family . . . Whatever yeh say, blood's important . . ." -_ The Order of the Phoenix

 _RING._

"Dean."

 _RING . . . RING -_

 _BEEP._

"Hello?"

" _Sam, is that you?"_

". . . Dad?"

Across the room from him, Alex sat up, fully awake. He tried not to pay too much attention to it as he focused on the fact that their father was on the phone. "Are you hurt?"

There was a brief pause from the other end of the phone. " _I'm fine,"_ came the familiar gravelly voice.

"We were looking for you everywhere," he continued, his voice quickening. "We didn't know where you were, if you were okay."

" _Sammy, I'm alright."_ Dad sounded close to tears, the closest he had been in years. " _What about you and Dean?"_

Sam glanced over at his brother, who was just starting to wake up. "W-we're fine. Dad, where are you?"

" _Sorry, kiddo, I-I can't tell you that."_

"What?! Why not?"

"Is that Dad?" Dean asked incredulously, gazing over at his brother.

" _Look, I know this is hard for you to understand, you just . . . you're gonna have to trust me on this."_

The reason why suddenly became clear. "You're after it, aren't you?" Sam asked breathlessly. "The thing that killed Mom."

Another pause. " _Yeah,"_ came their father's answer, soft enough to barely be heard through the phone. " _It's a demon, Sam."_

"A demon?" He glanced back at Dean to find that his brother was looking for his shirt. "You know for sure?"

"A demon? What's he sayin'?" Dean asked. Again, Sam ignored him.

" _I do. Listen, Sammy, I, uh . . . I also know what happened to your girlfriend."_ Sam's heart stopped. So Dad knew. He supposed he should be shocked by that fact, but he was too numb to be shocked by something like that. " _I'm so sorry. I would've done anything to protect you from that."_

"You know where it is?"

" _Yeah, I think I'm finally closing in on it."_

"Let us help."

" _You can't. You can't be any part of it."_

"Why not?"

Dean, now with his shirt on, reached towards Sam. "Give me the phone."

" _Listen, Sammy, that's why I'm calling. You and your brother, you gotta stop lookin' for me. Alright? Now I need you to write down these names."_

Sam squinted in confusion. What was Dad saying? What did he mean they couldn't help? They had Alex now, the three of them were together again, Dad couldn't do this on his own, he needed backup. "Names? What names? Dad, wha - talk to me! Tell me what's going on!"

His father's voice became sharp, commanding. Just as it used to back when Sam was little. " _Look, we don't have time for this. This is bigger than you think. They're everywhere. Even us talking right now, it's - it's not safe."_

"No," Sam refused. He just found their Dad again, he wasn't about to let him go, not until they had answers. "Alright? No way."

"Give me the phone - !"

" _I've given you an order. Now you stop following me and you do your job. You understand me? Now take down these names."_

Rage boiled up inside Sam. After all this time, he thought his father had changed at least a little, had at least wanted them to be okay, but it was still the same old damn argument. Do your job. Stop asking questions. Do as you're told. Just follow orders. His lips curled upward and he was about to release some of his frustrations on his father when Dean ripped the phone out of his hand. So instead he settled for clenching his hand in a fist and biting one finger while Dean took over.

"Dad! It's me, where are you?" Sam looked over just in time to see Dean's eyes widen, then glaze over with the familiar look of an obedient little soldier. Just the same as always. "Yes sir." Dean paused and gulped, then looked over at the night table next to them. "Uh, yeah, I got a pen. What are their names?"

Exasperated at Dean's good-boy act, Sam glared down at the covers, then glanced upwards. There was Alex, frozen on the couch, her eyes glazed over with tears and her face fixed in a mask of disbelief. Before he could even think of saying anything to her, she got up from her perch on the couch and swiftly walked to the bathroom, the door slamming shut behind her. In the back corner of his mind, he wondered if maybe he should check on her. She looked pretty upset. However, he ultimately decided against it. Checking on her might just make things worse. He should let her have her space for right now. Besides, he was in no shape to worry about what was going on with her. He could check on her later. Meanwhile, it seemed that they had another case to tackle.

 _Fire. Heat, unbearable heat. Her heart pounding in her chest. No way out. The soft fur of her stuffed tiger pressed against her flushed skin. Her mother's eyes, wide with fear, replaced with the yellow eyes of the shadow man next to the crib. A heart monitor beeping incessantly somewhere close to her. Her father's voice, angry, grieving, pleading. Another voice, older, tight with stress. Sam and Dean playing. The woman with the kind face on the edge of the bed. A couple in their late forties. The McCabe kids. The heart monitor going faster and faster until it flat-lined -_

Alex forced her eyes opened as she jerked from slumber, a bump in the road causing her head to snap forward and hit the window. With a groan, she rubbed the spot where her forehead met the glass and sat up, trying to place herself. Everything she saw was dark, but at least she could tell she was in the backseat of a car and she was moving at a fairly fast clip.

"Welcome back, Sleeping Beauty."

She looked up towards the front, her heart pounding furiously in her chest. There was Dean in the passenger's seat (odd, especially since he drove most of the time) and Sam driving. Her heart slowed and she breathed a sigh of relief. Of course. She was in the Impala. She had been dreaming again or something. They were on their way to another job. "Hey," she finally responded, sitting up fully. "What's going on?"

Sam glanced at her in the rearview mirror before looking back at the road, while Dean was studying something (it looked like a map) intently. "We're just goin' over what Dad left us over the phone. Turns out that the names that he gave us are all couples."

"Couples?" she asked, leaning forward in her seat.

"Yeah, three different couples. All went missing."

"And they're all from different towns?" Sam chimed in. "Different states?"

"That's right, yeah," Dean confirmed. "Washington, New York, Colorado. Each couple took a road trip cross-country. None of them arrived at their destination. None of them were ever heard from again."

"Well, it's a big country, Dean," Sam pointed out. "They could have disappeared anywhere."

"Yeah, could have," Dean replied, "but each one's route took them through the same part of Indiana, always on the second week of April, one year after another after another."

"Hang on, isn't _this_ the second week of April?" Alex asked again.

"Yep."

"So Dad is sending us to Indiana to go hunting for something before another couple vanishes?" Sam summarized.

Dean pointed at Sam without looking up. "Yahtzee."

Alex nodded, resigned to the fact that they would have to put their search for Dad on hold for another day. She glanced over at Sam, who had gone oddly quiet. For some reason, Alex thought he looked rather annoyed by this prospect, though she wasn't quite sure why. Yeah, she supposed she was annoyed too, but they still had lives to save; she could always resolve her own issues with Dad at a later date.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dean shake his head in amazement as he continued to study the map-like object in his hands. "Can you imagine putting together a pattern like this?" he asked his siblings. "The different obits Dad had to go through? The man's a master."

She stiffened, pushing down a surge of resentment that welled up quickly within her. She didn't know why that caused such a strong reaction in her. After all, it wasn't like Dean was wrong - their father was incredible at his job. _Yeah, but he sucked at being a father._ The surprising thought was shoved aside, however, as the sound around them changed from the quiet humming of the engine to the crunch of gravel on the side of the road.

Sam sighed as he stopped the car, putting it in park, and Dean looked up in bewilderment. "What are you doing?"

Sam cut the engine, plunging the car into silence. "We're not going to Indiana," he said. His voice was quiet.

Alex raised an eyebrow while Dean studied their brother. "We're not?"

"No. We're going to California. Dad called from a pay phone - Sacramento area code."

Oh shit. Sam was serious. Alex gripped her seat hard as she felt the tensions begin to rise. This could get ugly fast. "Sam," Dean started in a warning, weary tone.

"Dean, if this demon killed Mom and Jess and Dad's closing in, we got to be there. We've got to help."

"Dad doesn't want our help," Dean replied.

"Well, I don't care."

Alex's eyebrows shot up into her scalp. "He's given us an order," Dean continued, his voice harder than before.

"I _don't_. _Care_ ," Sam repeated. Dean and Alex both looked at him incredulously. This was the first time Alex had ever heard him directly disobey an order from Dad. What had happened to the sweet little boy she had once known, the one who looked up to their father and whose biggest dream was to have his approval? Sam gazed back at Dean, not even looking at Alex. "We don't always have to do what he says," he continued.

"Sam, Dad is asking us to work jobs, to save lives," Dean replied. "It's important."

"Alright, I understand. Believe me, I understand. But I'm talking one week here, man, to - to get answers. To get revenge."

"Alright, look, I know how you feel -"

"Do you?" There was a pause as Alex and Dean gave him another incredulous look. "How old were you when Mom died? Four? Alex you were, what, three?" Alex felt her jaw clench. What the hell did he think he was doing, bringing up Mom? He knew how much of a touchy subject her death was. Before she could ask, though, Sam continued. "Jess died six months ago. How the hell would you know how I feel?"

Whatever Sam was hoping to evoke in Dean, Dean clearly wasn't buying it. This must have been something they had talked about before. Instead, Dean tried a different tactic. "Dad said it wasn't safe. For any of us." His statement seemed to have about as much effect on Sam as Sam's had on Dean, as all that Sam did was shake his head in disbelief. "I mean, he obviously knows something that we don't, so if he says to stay away, we stay away."

"I don't understand the blind faith you have in the man," Sam replied. "I mean, it's like you don't even question him."

"Yeah, it's called being a good son!" Dean shot back.

"Dean!" Alex reprimanded, not able to stay quiet any longer. Why the hell were they fighting? They needed each other. That was why they had found her, wasn't it? Because they all needed each other?

Her words fell on deaf ears. Sam opened the door and got out, slamming it shut behind him. Dean rolled his eyes and followed suit. Alex quickly got out as well, if only to make sure this didn't end in a fistfight. She watched in horrified disbelief as Sam began taking his things out of the trunk, Dean walking around and eyeing him up. "You're a selfish bastard, you know that?" Dean asked, his voice hard and cutting. "You just do whatever you want. You don't care what anybody thinks."

"Dean, stop it!" Alex yelled at him, grabbing his shoulder and pulling him back. Dean ripped her hand from his arm and tossed it off.

"You stay out of this," he warned her. She stepped back in fear. His face was tight with a quiet rage, the likes she had never seen on him before.

"That's what you really think?" Sam asked. He already had his backpack on.

"Yes it is," Dean answered quickly, turning back to him.

Sam gave a quiet scoff, then grabbed his laptop bag from the trunk and shouldered it. "Well, then this selfish bastard is going to California." And with that, he walked off into the night.

"Wha - Sam!" Alex called after him.

"Come on, you're not serious," Dean said.

"I _am_ serious," Sam replied without looking back.

"It's the middle of the night! Hey, I'm taking off! I will leave your ass, you hear me?"

Sam finally stopped and turned around. "That's what I want you to do."

There was a heart-wrenching silence. Alex felt her heart drop as she waited, hoping against all hope that he was kidding. Then Dean's voice came from next to her. "Goodbye, Sam."

"Wh - Dean!" she said. "What are you doing? You're just going to leave him in the middle of nowhere?"

"Hey, I'm just doing what he wanted me to do," Dean told her. His voice was unsympathetic. "Let's go. Back in the car."

She stared at him in stunned silence for a few moments, then felt something inside her snap. Grabbing him again, she turned him around and punched him as hard as she could in the shoulder. "Ow! Dammit, Alex!"

"What the _hell_ is WRONG with you?!" she screamed at him, her voice echoing into the empty night. "You honestly think you're going to just drive off and leave him here alone?! Are you insane?! You spend all that time trying to find me just so you can have the Winchester kids back together and now you're going to drop everything because of one argument?"

"Sam made his choice!" he yelled right back at her. "He wants to go take off and look for Dad even though we have lives to save, then fine! I'm not stoppin' him! Now you can either come with me and help me stop another couple from dying at the hands of some freak or I can take off and leave you here with him. It's your choice, sweetheart."

Alex gave him a glare of disbelief and clenched her teeth, her lips pressed together in a thin white line. "And here I thought family mattered to you," she said, turning away from him and getting back into the car on the passenger's side, slamming the door shut behind her. After a few minutes, Dean got into the driver's seat, closed the door, turned on the engine, and started driving into the night. As the car crunched over gravel and went back onto the relatively smooth asphalt, Alex looked out of the rear windshield, just in time to see Sam turn around and walk away from them.

 _Burkitsville, Indiana_

Rain ran down the windows of the car in long rivulets as they entered the quiet town. The town itself was cheerful enough, but the day outside was gray and gloomy. Perhaps it could sense the mood inside the Impala and had mirrored itself to match. Whatever the reason, Alex was glad that it was this miserable, but at the same time hoped that it was dry wherever Sam was.

The car stopped and she heard a beeping sound next to her from a cell phone. She raised her head from where it had been leaned against the window and glanced over, just in time to see Dean, phone in hand, scrolling through something. She didn't have to see the screen in order to know it was his contacts. He paused, thinking for a few moments, then shook his head slightly as he clenched his jaw and closed the phone, putting it back in his pocket. Noticing that Alex was sitting up, he looked over at her. "Get any sleep?"

She shook her head. "You know I don't sleep well in cars," she replied, her voice quiet. She still wasn't sure she wanted to talk to him after what happened last night, but it wasn't like she had another option. They did have a case to work.

He nodded, seeming to understand everything that hadn't been said. "Right. Forgot about that."

There was a tense silence for a few moments, neither party willing to say what was actually on their minds and waiting for the other to make the first move. Finally it was Alex who gave in first. "So, another stop, huh?"

"Yep."

"So what do we do now?"

Dean glanced around, his eyes landing on a small cafe to their left. An older man was sitting outside of it on one of the chairs, leaned backwards so that his back was against one of the windows. From what they could see, he had a sullen expression on his face. "Now we talk to the locals again, see if anybody saw anything. Let's start with Happy over there."

He nodded definitively and got out of the car, leaving Alex to follow behind him. Looking up, she saw a sign outside the establishment reading 'Scotty's Cafe' with an intricate design painted around it. It looked to be a rather small, well-kept place. The windows all had lacy curtains pulled shut, there were flower boxes at the front, and small tables with red-and-white gingham table cloths and black wooden chairs sat in little clusters under the awning. The man with the unpleasant expression was in one of those chairs, leaning it on its back two legs and staring at them as they walked up. As she had seen from the car, he was an older man, his curly hair slightly longer than usual and with little streaks of gray in it, wearing jeans, a button-up shirt, and a heavy jacket.

Dean sauntered right up to him as Alex followed closely behind, trying not to look too out of place. "Let me guess - Scotty," Dean said, clearly referencing the sign. Alex guessed he had seen it too.

The man looked at the Impala parked at the corner of the street, then gave a slow look up towards his own sign, and then back at the pair before him. "Yep."

Dean nodded. "Hi, my name's John Bonham. This is my friend, Jamie Page." He tilted his head to indicate Alex next to him.

Scotty studied them. "Aren't those the drummer and lead guitarist for Led Zeppelin?"

"Actually, the guitarist for Led Zeppelin is Jimmy Page," Alex corrected him. "Common mistake. But it's good to see you're a classic rock fan." Dean elbowed her, clearly trying to get her to shut up without making it too obvious.

Scotty seemed to notice but didn't comment on their exchange. "What can I do for you, John and Jamie?"

Dean quickly took over again, clearing his throat and pulling two folded squares of paper out of his pocket. "I was wondering if, uh, you've seen these people by chance," he said, unfolding them and giving them to Scotty. Looking over, Alex could see that they were one of the couples who had gone missing - Holly and Vince Parker.

Scotty glanced at the pictures briefly. "Nope. Who are they?"

"Friends of ours," Dean answered. "They went missing about a year ago."

"They were supposed to call us when they got to where they were goin', but . . . we never heard from 'em," Alex said, crossing her arms over her chest and playing the part of the concerned friend. "They passed through somewhere around here and we've already checked Scottsburg and Salem -"

"Sorry," Scotty interrupted, abruptly cutting her off and handing Dean back the pictures. "We don't get many strangers around here."

There was an awkward pause and Alex nodded. "Right. Of course." She added in a touch of disappointment to her voice and rubbed her arms for emphasis.

Dean, on the other hand, went for a different approach. "Scotty, you got a smile that lights up a room. Anybody ever tell you that?" Scotty stared at him in hard silence, his face firmly set in a frown. Dean chuckled awkwardly in response. "Never mind. See you around. Let's go, Jamie."

Together, the two walked off, feeling Scotty's hard eyes on their back. Alex waited until they were out of his earshot to speak again. "I don't like it," she whispered.

"Well, I mean, small town life never did appeal to you, and God knows Scotty-boy could do with a cup of happy juice -"

"No, I mean he's hiding something," she clarified.

"Oh yeah, that too."

"I mean, did you see the way he just shoved the papers back at us and cut me off? Everyone else at least waited to tell us to buzz off, and the look on his face?" She shook her head. "I dunno, I've got a bad feeling about this."

"Alright, well, tone it down a little there, Carrie Fisher," Dean replied. "That was just one guy. We still have a whole town to search through. Don't want people getting too suspicious before they have to."

"Yeah, you're right," she acquiesced. "Where to next?"

"Let's try the garage next, they mighta had car troubles," he answered, nodding towards a building reading 'Jorgeson Motors'. "Who knows, maybe these people will be a little more friendly."

However, as it turned out, the people at the garage and general store were about as helpful as Scotty had been. "You sure they didn't stop for gas or something?" Dean asked. The older couple who ran the store, Harley and Stacey felt just as closed off, just as secretive.

Stacey, an attractive woman with blonde hair reaching her chin, crossed her arms and shook her head while Harley, a tall man with salt and pepper hair, turned back to them while studying the picture. "Nope, don't remember 'em." He looked up at Dean and Alex, a concerned look on his face. "You say they were friends of yours?"

"That's right," Alex answered.

"Did the guy have a tattoo?"

Everyone looked up. A young woman, about Dean and Alex's age, was coming in from the back, her arms ladened with a pile of parcels. Her long blonde hair was pulled back in a low ponytail, a few strands hanging loose and framing her face. "Yes, he did," Dean replied.

The young woman put the boxes down on the counter and walked over to where Dean and Alex stood, looking at the pictures. She nodded and looked up at Harley and Stacey. "You remember? They were just married." She handed the pictures back to Harley, who studied the pictures again with a thoughtful look.

"You're right," he said, seeming to remember. "They _did_ stop for gas. Weren't here for more than ten minutes."

"Do you remember anything else?" Dean asked, seizing on this opportunity.

Harley glanced at the picture again. "Well, I told them how to get back to the interstate. They left town."

"Could you point us in that same direction?"

"Sure."

"Thank you so much," Alex said. "We really appreciate it."

Within minutes, Alex and Dean were back on the highway, driving out of town and following Holly and Vince's trail. "You get a weird vibe from them too?" Dean asked as he drove, keeping an eye on the road.

"Yeah, same one that I got from Scotty. They're hiding something."

"Well, if they are, I don't think the girl's in on it."

"What is up with that town? It's like they're all trying to keep something hidden. You don't think they killed the couple, do you?"

"Yeah, well, if they did, they do a damn good job of covering it up." Dean would have continued, but he was interrupted by a wild beeping from the back seat. "What the hell? Lix, can you reach into my bag, see what that is?"

"Sure." Doing as she was told, she leaned over and rummaged around in the bag, her hand not finding anything. "I can't reach. Can you pull over?"

"Fine," he replied, acquiescing and pulling off to the side of the road and putting the Impala in park. Nodding her thanks, Alex unbuckled and climbed over the seat, trying not to hit Dean in the face. "Hey hey hey, watch the leather!" Ignoring his protests, she sat down and started rummaging through the bag, finding the source relatively quickly now that she could see. "Find it yet?"

"Yeah," she replied, pulling it out. "It's the EMF meter. It's going crazy." True to her word, the little black box in her hands was squealing wildly, the indicator swinging from the yellow to the red and back. She looked up at Dean to find him squinting in confusion. "We're not near any power lines or anything, right?"

"Can't be, we're in the middle of the boonies," he replied. "Only power source is back near the town."

"So you think there's something here?"

"Maybe." Dean looked around, then stopped when he looked to his right. "Let's try over there." Alex glanced up, curious, and saw what he had been referencing: an arch right in front of what looked to be an orchard. A strange feeling washed over her the second she laid eyes on it, as if something she had eaten wasn't agreeing with her. However, the sound of her brother slamming the car door next to her brought her out of her daze just long enough to scramble out and follow him. Together, the siblings crossed the road and walked into the orchard.

As soon as Alex stepped through the arch, though, she found she had to pause for a second. That same feeling from before was back, stronger this time. "You alright?" Dean asked, and she looked up to find him turned back towards her with a glimmer of concern in his eyes.

She nodded, forcing herself to forget the strange feeling. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. Let's keep going." Dean shrugged and consented, continuing his trek through the orchard. Alex followed a little after, managing to catch up with him. "This place gives me the creeps," she said as they made their way deeper and deeper through the trees.

"C'mon, don't tell me you're scared," Dean teased. "What, you afraid one of the trees is gonna come to life and getcha?"

"Dude, knock it off, I'm being serious here."

"Hey, I can hold your hand if it'll make you feel better."

"You're an ass, you know that?" Dean just laughed. "Seriously, though, you really don't think this whole thing's a little weird?"

"Well, we do hunt supernatural beings for a living. Weird just comes with the . . . territory . . ." He suddenly trailed off and stopped.

"What is it?" she asked, halting next to him and looking around. "You find something?"

"Check this out," he replied, walking in the direction he was staring. Following him, she saw what it was that had caught his attention. It was a large scarecrow up on a cross. Its clothes were torn and ratty, as if it had been there for a while, and it had long scraggly hair that hung down to the collar of its worn-down coat. Its hat, shirt, jeans, and scarf were all faded and tattered, and it had a scythe inserted into one arm. The face itself had no nose or mouth, but instead two holes where the eyes were supposed to be and long lines of stitches.

Dean took one look at the messed-up scarecrow. "Dude, you fugly."

Alex gave him a look.

"What? Tell me that's not the ugliest-lookin' thing you've ever seen."

She opened her mouth to reply but stopped and took a closer look at the thing. "There's something on its arm."

"So get a ladder and take a look."

"Are you crazy? I'm not getting near that thing! Do you see that scythe?"

Dean sighed and shook his head. "Making the big brother do all the dirty work. That's just cruel." Alex rolled her eyes in response. Dean grabbed a ladder standing next to a nearby tree and placed it next to the nightmare scarecrow's cross, climbing up high enough so that he was face to face with the thing. He eyed it for a few seconds while Alex held her breath, then leaned over and pulled back its sleeve just a bit to reveal an swirled design inked into a layer of shriveled leather. Pulling out the missing persons' reports, he glanced down at the top one, back to the scarecrow's arm, then up at the scarecrow's face. "Nice tat." He turned back to Alex. "Looks like we figured out what happened to the Parkers."


End file.
